where is the clang-format-17 on Ubuntu 22.04 coming from and what is its exact version number?

[jeffli678]

I have a project that uses this action to check clang-format. I am currently using clang-format 17 to locally format the code. However, the formatted source code results in error in the action run. I am guessing this is caused by subtle differences in the clang-format version.

FYI, I am using the clang-format-17 from msys2 and it is 17.0.6. What is the version of clang-format-17 this action is using? I checked the ones that come with ubuntu 22.04 source, and it does not have clang-format-17. It only has clang-format 13/14/15. So I am wondering where is the clang-format-17 used by this action coming from, and what is its exact number?

[jeffli678]

oh nvm I figured it is Ubuntu clang-format version 17.0.2 (1~exp1ubuntu2.1). This could be the problem -- since I am using 17.0.6

[jeffli678]

I guess this can be fixed by updating the docker to use the latest sub-version of clang-format-17?

[jidicula]

Here's a quick walkthrough of what version of clang-format I install. In the clang-format-image.yml workflow, I've defined a mapping of each clang-format version to an Ubuntu release that contains it:

clang-format-action/.github/workflows/clang-format-image.yml

Lines 30 to 45 in dbc2305

	- {version: "18", ubuntu: "noble"}
	- {version: "17", ubuntu: "noble"}
	- {version: "16", ubuntu: "noble"}
	- {version: "15", ubuntu: "noble"}
	- {version: "14", ubuntu: "noble"}
	- {version: "13", ubuntu: "jammy"}
	- {version: "12", ubuntu: "jammy"}
	- {version: "11", ubuntu: "jammy"}
	- {version: "10", ubuntu: "focal"}
	- {version: "9", ubuntu: "focal"}
	- {version: "8", ubuntu: "focal"}
	- {version: "7", ubuntu: "focal"}
	- {version: "6.0", ubuntu: "focal"}
	- {version: "5.0", ubuntu: "bionic"}
	- {version: "4.0", ubuntu: "bionic"}
	- {version: "3.9", ubuntu: "bionic"}

I've grabbed these mappings after looking at package.ubuntu.com and searching for clang-format across all suites.

This Actions workflow runs daily to rebuild and republish a Docker image defined in this Dockerfile. This Dockerfile accepts 2 args:

• UBUNTU_VERSION
• CLANG_FORMAT_VERSION

These 2 args are used to first fetch the base Docker image for the Ubuntu version I want to build from, then to apt install the particular clang-format version I want to include in the Docker image. This will always get the latest minor or patch version of clang-format available in Ubuntu's apt archives at image build time. You can see the final images here.

---

This makes it a bit tricky for me to include particular minor or patch versions of clang-format in this Action. Versions 3.9-6.0 are sort of an exception because I think the LLVM project was doing things differently then, but in any case I've selected only 1 minor version under each major version to support.

I know this probably doesn't really answer your question satisfactorily - I made this tradeoff to only provide guarantees at the major version level so I'd be able to keep a consistent build process across all versions (3.9 to 18) just with a simple apt install. I did look into the alternative of doing a proper build myself, but this seemed to lead down the path of building up the whole LLVM toolchain and build dependencies in an Actions workflow and building the binaries there, which was very challening. Bootstrapping old versions of cmake & co. didn't seem simple. I'd definitely welcome a PR if anyone is able to wrangle a build process that's consistent across all versions and is relatively easy to maintain.

[echoix]

Did you ever stumble upon https://github.com/muttleyxd/clang-tools-static-binaries?

There's also this that builds clang-format, but is targeted at building python wheels https://github.com/ssciwr/clang-format-wheel