How to get single line aligned case statements in a switch, using clang-format

Question

I would like clang-format to format like:

switch (x)
{
case long_name: return 1;
case sn:        return 2;
}

The AllowShortCaseLabelsOnASingleLine option gets them on the same line,
but I have not found a way to get the statements aligned.

Answer 1

As of right now, it's not possible to do what you're asking using ClangFormat.

The official explanation as to why that is:

Each additional style option adds costs to the clang-format project. Some of these costs affect the clang-format development itself, as we need to make sure that any given combination of options work and that new features don’t break any of the existing options in any way. There are also costs for end users as options become less discoverable and people have to think about and make a decision on options they don’t really care about.

The goal of the clang-format project is more on the side of supporting a limited set of styles really well as opposed to supporting every single style used by a codebase somewhere in the wild. [...]

The only way you may be able to do something like that would be to:

1. Suggest the style option to the developers;
2. Wait until the desired style option gets added;
3. Use an alternative to ClangFormat which is capable of aligning the statements.

Sources:

1. https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html#configurable-format-style-options
2. https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html#adding-additional-style-options