CLANG-TIDY(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

clang-tidy — bestie, this is the manual page for clang-tidy 17, and it's literally the linter that reads your C++ and tells you what's sus 💅

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so here's how you actually run this thing:

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

and then, the options. so many options. let's get into it 🦋

💖 OPTIONS 💖

🌈 Generic Options

• --help — shows you the available options (and --help-hidden shows you even more 👀)
• --help-list — prints the list of available options (and --help-list-hidden for even more)
• --version — tells you which version of this program you're running

👑 clang-tidy options

• --checks=<string> — a comma-separated list of globs, and each glob can have an optional - prefix. Globs get processed in the order they appear in the list. A glob with no - prefix adds checks with matching names to the set; a glob with the - prefix removes checks with matching names from the set of enabled checks. This option's value gets appended to the value of the Checks option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.
• --config=<string> — specifies a configuration in YAML/JSON format:

-config="{Checks: '*',

CheckOptions: {x: y}}"

When the value is empty, clang-tidy will attempt to find a file named .clang-tidy for each source file in its parent directories.

• --config-file=<string> — specify the path of .clang-tidy or a custom config file:

e.g. --config-file=/some/path/myTidyConfigFile

Internally this option works exactly the same way as --config after reading the specified config file.

Use either --config-file or --config, not both. pick a lane bestie 😭

• --dump-config — dumps configuration in YAML format to stdout. You can use this option along with a file name (and -- if the file is outside of a project with a configured compilation database). The configuration used for this file will be printed. Use it along with -checks=* to include the configuration of all checks.
• --enable-check-profile — enables per-check timing profiles, and prints a report to stderr.
• --explain-config — for each enabled check, explains where it's enabled, i.e. in the clang-tidy binary, on the command line, or in a specific configuration file.
• --export-fixes=<filename> — the YAML file to store suggested fixes in. The stored fixes can be applied to the input source code with clang-apply-replacements.
• --extra-arg=<string> — an additional argument to append to the compiler command line.
• --extra-arg-before=<string> — an additional argument to prepend to the compiler command line.
• --fix — apply suggested fixes. Without -fix-errors, clang-tidy will bail out if any compilation errors were found. 🚪
• --fix-errors — apply suggested fixes even if compilation errors were found. If compiler errors have attached fix-its, clang-tidy will apply them as well.
• --fix-notes — if a warning has no fix, but a single fix can be found through an associated diagnostic note, apply the fix. Specifying this flag implicitly enables the --fix flag.
• --format-style=<string> — the style for formatting code around applied fixes:
  • 'none' (the default) turns off formatting
  • 'file' (literally 'file', not a placeholder) uses the .clang-format file in the closest parent directory
  • '{ <json> }' specifies options inline, e.g. -format-style='{BasedOnStyle: llvm, IndentWidth: 8}'
  • 'llvm', 'google', 'webkit', 'mozilla'

See the clang-format documentation for the up-to-date info about formatting styles and options. This option overrides the FormatStyle option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.

• --header-filter=<string> — a regular expression matching the names of the headers to output diagnostics from. Diagnostics from the main file of each translation unit are always displayed. Can be used together with -line-filter. This option overrides the HeaderFilterRegex option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.
• --line-filter=<string> — a list of files with line ranges to filter the warnings. Can be used together with -header-filter. The format of the list is a JSON array of objects:

[      {"name":"file1.cpp","lines":[[1,3],[5,7]]}, {"name":"file2.h"}

]

• --list-checks — list all enabled checks and exit. Use it with -checks=* to list all available checks.
• --load=<pluginfilename> — load the specified plugin 🔌
• -p <string> — build path
• --quiet — run clang-tidy in quiet mode. This suppresses printing statistics about ignored warnings and warnings treated as errors, if the respective options are specified. 🤫
• --store-check-profile=<prefix> — by default reports are printed in tabulated format to stderr. When this option is passed, these per-TU profiles are instead stored as JSON.
• --system-headers — display the errors from system headers. This option overrides the SystemHeaders option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.
• --use-color — use colors in diagnostics. If it's not set, colors will be used if the terminal connected to standard output supports colors. This option overrides the UseColor option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.
• --verify-config — check the config files to ensure each check and option is recognized. ✅
• --vfsoverlay=<filename> — overlay the virtual filesystem described by file over the real file system.
• --warnings-as-errors=<string> — upgrades warnings to errors. Same format as -checks. This option's value gets appended to the value of the WarningsAsErrors option in the .clang-tidy file, if there is one.

---

-p <build-path> is used to read a compile command database. 🗂️

For example, it can be a CMake build directory in which a file named compile_commands.json exists (use the -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON CMake option to get this output). When no build path is specified, a search for compile_commands.json will be attempted through all parent paths of the first input file. See: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html for an example of setting up Clang Tooling on a source tree.

<source0> ... specify the paths of source files. These paths are 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, 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 will be automatically removed, but the rest of a relative path must be a suffix of a path in the compile command database.

🌸 Configuration files 🌸

clang-tidy attempts to read configuration for each source file from a .clang-tidy file located in the closest parent directory of the source file. The .clang-tidy file is specified in YAML format. If any configuration options have a corresponding command-line option, the command-line option takes precedence. 👑

The following configuration options may be used in a .clang-tidy file:

• CheckOptions — list of key-value pairs defining check-specific options. Example:

CheckOptions:
  some-check.SomeOption: 'some value'

• Checks — same as --checks. Additionally, the list of globs can be specified as a list instead of a string.
• ExtraArgs — same as --extra-args.
• ExtraArgsBefore — same as --extra-args-before.
• FormatStyle — same as --format-style.
• HeaderFileExtensions — file extensions to consider to determine if a given diagnostic is located in a header file.
• HeaderFilterRegex — same as --header-filter-regex.
• ImplementationFileExtensions — file extensions to consider to determine if a given diagnostic is located in an implementation file.
• InheritParentConfig — if this option is true in a config file, the configuration file in the parent directory (if any exists) will be taken and the current config file will be applied on top of the parent one. 🧬
• SystemHeaders — same as --system-headers.
• UseColor — same as --use-color.
• User — specifies the name or e-mail of the user running clang-tidy. This option is used, for example, to place the correct user name in TODO() comments in the relevant check.
• WarningsAsErrors — same as --warnings-as-errors.

---

The effective configuration can be inspected using --dump-config:

$ clang-tidy --dump-config
---
Checks:                '-*,some-check'
WarningsAsErrors:      ''
HeaderFileExtensions:  ['', 'h','hh','hpp','hxx']
ImplementationFileExtensions: ['c','cc','cpp','cxx']
HeaderFilterRegex:     ''
FormatStyle:           none
InheritParentConfig:   true
User:                  user
CheckOptions:
  some-check.SomeOption: 'some value'
...

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it, no crumbs 💅✨ this was clang-tidy 17 from User Commands, dated June 2025 — the CLANG-TIDY(1) manual, periodt 🎀🦋