Running Clang-Tidy on a Large Project

Question

I ran clang-tidy (Clang-Extra-Tools 6.0.0) in the root directory of the source code of an application (MPlayer-1.3.0). Precisely, I use run-clang-tidy.py python script, as follows:

run-clang-tidy.py -header-filter='.*' -checks='-*,readability-braces-around-statements' -fix

The commands database is also stored in the root directory in a file named compile_commands.json. After gathering all fixes, it tries to apply them but no fix is applied on any of the source files compiled from the inner directories. Here is the first part of the error report:

Applying fixes ...
Described file './libavutil/internal.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavutil/x86/intmath.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file 'libavformat/internal.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/bytestream.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/flac.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/get_bits.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/internal.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/mathops.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file './libavcodec/put_bits.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file 'libavformat/matroskaenc.c' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file 'libavformat/subtitles.h' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
Described file 'libavformat/apngdec.c' doesn't exist. 
Ignoring...
...

These files are compiled using the Makefile located in the folder ffmpeg. For example, libavformat/apngdec.c is located at ./ffmpeg/libavformat/apngdec.c where . is the root directory of MPlayer-1.3.0. How can I fix the problem?

Answer 1

In fact, it was a bug in Clang Tidy. It only happens in the case of exports. This happens in cases such as when the run-clang-tidy script is called with -fix switch. The main problem is that the fixes stored in the export file should use absolute paths. This usually happens with projects using CMAKE to generate the compile commands database. But MPlayer uses Makefile as the build system and I used Bear to generate the database. There are also problems with merging the fixes to the same location.

To fix the problem, mainly, I constructed absolute paths and made some other changes similar to those for the code without export. Finally, the YAML export file is revised and generated. The patch is here.