The CPP Core guidelines are commonly used in modern C++ development. Here, I will show you how you can setup your development environment to check you code against the guidelines using clang-tidy.

Install dependencies

1
2
3
4
5

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clang clang-tidy

clang --version
clang-tidy --version

Create a simple application

main.cpp

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <vector>

void printList(const std::vector<int> &input, const char *delimiter = " ")
{
    std::copy(std::begin(input), std::end(input), std::ostream_iterator<int>{std::cout, delimiter});
}

int main()
{
    std::vector<int> my_list{1, 2, 3, 4};
    printList(my_list);
    return 0;
}

Compile your executable and run check

Checking CPP core guidelines:

1

clang-tidy -checks='cppcoreguidelines-*' main.cpp -- -std=c++17

Using all checkers (see list):

1

clang-tidy -checks='*' main.cpp -- -std=c++17

You will get the warning for all checkers:

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14

/workspaces/playground/main.cpp:5:47: warning: declaring a parameter with a default argument is disallowed [fuchsia-default-arguments]
void printList(const std::vector<int> &input, const char *delimiter = " ")
                                              ^                    ~~~~~~~
/workspaces/playground/main.cpp:12:22: warning: calling a function that uses a default argument is disallowed [fuchsia-default-arguments]
    std::vector<int> my_list{1, 2, 3, 4};
                     ^
/usr/lib/gcc/aarch64-linux-gnu/7.5.0/../../../../include/c++/7.5.0/bits/stl_vector.h:384:7: note: default parameter was declared here
             const allocator_type& __a = allocator_type())
             ^
/workspaces/playground/main.cpp:13:5: warning: calling a function that uses a default argument is disallowed [fuchsia-default-arguments]
    printList(my_list);
    ^
/workspaces/playground/main.cpp:5:47: note: default parameter was declared here
void printList(const std::vector<int> &input, const char *delimiter = " ")