Clang-Tidy Review

Create a pull-request review based on the warnings from clang-tidy.

Inspired by clang-tidy-diff, Clang-Tidy Review only runs on the changes in the pull request. This makes it nice and speedy, as well as being useful for projects that aren't completely clang-tidy clean yet.

Returns the number of comments, so you can decide whether the warnings act as suggestions, or check failure.

Doesn't spam by repeating identical warnings for the same line.

Can use compile_commands.json, so you can optionally configure the build how you like first.

Example usage:

name: clang-tidy-review

# You can be more specific, but it currently only works on pull requests
on: [pull_request]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2

    # Optionally generate compile_commands.json

    - uses: ZedThree/[email protected]
      id: review
    # If there are any comments, fail the check
    - if: steps.review.outputs.total_comments > 0
      run: exit 1

Limitations

This is a Docker container-based Action because it needs to install some system packages (the different clang-tidy versions) as well as some Python packages. This that means that there's a two-three minutes start-up in order to build the Docker container. If you need to install some additional packages you can pass them via the apt_packages argument.

GitHub only mounts the GITHUB_WORKSPACE directory (that is, the default place where it clones your repository) on the container. If you install additional libraries/packages yourself, you'll need to make sure they are in this directory, otherwise they won't be accessible from inside this container.

It seems the GitHub API might only accept a limited number of comments at once, so clang-tidy-review will only attempt to post the first max_comments of them (default 25, as this has worked for me).

Inputs

• token: Authentication token
  • default: ${{ github.token }}
• build_dir: Directory containing the compile_commands.json file. This should be relative to GITHUB_WORKSPACE (the default place where your repository is cloned)
  • default: '.'
• clang_tidy_version: Version of clang-tidy to use; one of 6.0, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
  • default: '11'
• clang_tidy_checks: List of checks
  • default: '-*,performance-*,readability-*,bugprone-*,clang-analyzer-*,cppcoreguidelines-*,mpi-*,misc-*'
• include: Comma-separated list of files or patterns to include
  • default: "*.[ch],*.[ch]xx,*.[ch]pp,*.[ch]++,*.cc,*.hh"
• exclude: Comma-separated list of files or patterns to exclude
  • default: ''
• apt_packages: Comma-separated list of apt packages to install
  • default: ''
• max_comments: Maximum number of comments to post at once
  • default: '25'

Outputs

• total_comments: Total number of warnings from clang-tidy

Real world project samples

Project	Workflow
BOUT++	CMake
Mudlet	CMake + Qt