Google's Java Coding Standards

2 spaces indentation may be useful in dynamically typed languages (Python, Groovy) but Java?

Then again they're only allowing 80 or 100 characters per line so those indents can mount up if they're more than 2 characters.

How does google enforce the style guide, do they use the standard static analysis tools such as checkstyle, PMD, FindBugs or do they have they own tools?

In eclipse itself you can define shareable code-style rules that are enforced every time you save a file that:
* Fix indentation
* Organize imports (to enforce the wild-carding rules).
* Add braces
* Etc.

You can then cover the rest of it using the built-in checkstyles plugins:
checkstyle.sourceforge.net/
Or defining their own. Checkstyles has ANT / Maven tasks that can be run as part of a build. The eclipse plugin highlights issues as your code.

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You would still run findbugs during a policing build to find bugs (obviously), but checkstyles is a good add for your java environment / build setup if you want to enforce a common setting of coding styles across a development team.

Do also look at the eclipse formatting rules as well as they can be implemented more quickly, while less easy to enforce in a build.

Seriously no tabs? This isn't Python lmao.

Just use tabs people and end this stupid argument. Spaces are for between words.

Yeah, the 2 spaces are bad enough (someone in Mountain View was smoking crack and washed it down with Python Kool-Aide), but they must really want that code to be completely unreadable with the K&R braces.


There is one and only one true brace style:

if (foo)
{
bar(); // (should be indented 4 spaces, but the webform loses them)
}


Anything else is unreadable, incorrect, communist, and the mark of the beast.

phloid domino,

K&R ("Egyptian") braces have been part of Sun/Oracle Java conventions since those conventions existed. Hence, the vast majority of Java projects use them. Let's all be friends anyway, OK? :)

I've been using Sun/Oracle Java conventions on all my projects with very minor tweaks, such as expanding line length limit to 120 characters and banning tabs.

Thinking of switching to Google Style though. 2 spaces for indents might make more sense after some getting used to.

We can all be friends, but K&R braces are still wrong. No matter who says different.

And the 2 spaces is just brain-dead, even among friends.

Google got most of it right. But not the 2-space madness and not the obsolete K&R braces.