CLANG-QUERY(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, this is the manual page for clang-query — yes, the whole CLANG-QUERY(1) situation, she's a User Commands girlie, and she's version 12. come sit with me, we're gonna get through this together 🫶

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

here's how you actually call her:

USAGE: clang-query [options] <source0> [... <sourceN>]

and here's everything she takes, no skips, no cuts, we're doing all of it 👑

🌈 Generic Options 🌈

• --help — shows you all the available options. and if that wasn't enough for you, --help-hidden gives you even more 👀
• --help-list — prints the list of available options. and yeah, there's a --help-list-hidden for more, because of course there is 💅
• --version — tells you which version of the program you're running. classic, iconic, never misses.

🎀 clang-query options 🎀

• -c=<command> — specify the command to run
• --extra-arg=<string> — an extra argument that gets appended to the compiler command line
• --extra-arg-before=<string> — an extra argument that gets prepended to the compiler command line (yes bestie, before, not after, they're different, don't mix them up 💀)
• -f=<file> — read commands from a file
• -p=<string> — the build path
• --preload=<file> — preload commands from a file and start interactive mode. it's giving multitasking 🌸
• --use-color — uses colors in detailed AST output. and here's the tea: if you don't set this, colors get used anyway if the terminal connected to standard output supports colors. so like, it's flexible. she's flexible.

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🦋 about that build path 🦋

so -p <build-path> is what you use to read a compile command database. yes, "database", very serious, very grown-up.

for example — and this is literally the example — it can be a CMake build directory that has a file called compile_commands.json in it. to get that output, use the -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON CMake option. 🎀

and if you don't specify a build path? then she goes searching for compile_commands.json through all the parent paths of the first input file. she's resourceful like that.

if you want an example of setting up Clang Tooling on a source tree, go here:

https://clang.llvm.org/docs/HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html

💜 about those source files 💜

<source0> ... you specify the paths of source files. and here's the part you actually need to remember:

• these paths get looked up in the compile command database
• if the path of a file is absolute, it needs to point into CMake's source tree
• if the path is relative, then the current working directory needs to be in the CMake source tree, and the file must be in a subdirectory of the current working directory
• "./" prefixes in the relative files get automatically removed
• but the rest of a relative path must be a suffix of a path in the compile command database

lowkey this is the part that trips everyone up so read it twice bestie, i'm not even joking 😭

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and that's the whole vibe. clang-query 12, born February 2022, forever repping CLANG-QUERY(1). slay, periodt, go query some clang 💅✨