CLANG-TIDY(1)

🦋 NAME 🦋

clang-tidy — it's the manual page for clang-tidy 20, bestie. That's literally the whole NAME section and I respect the brevity. 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so first, the vibe check — here's the usage, and yes it's giving exactly what you think:

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

then, the options. There are so many. Grab a snack. 🍓

✨ OPTIONS ✨

🫶 Generic Options

• --help — displays the available options. Wanna see the secret menu? --help-hidden has more.
• --help-list — displays the list of available options (--help-list-hidden for more).
• --version — displays the version of this program. iconic, honestly.

🔥 clang-tidy options

• --allow-no-checks — allows an empty set of enabled checks. Basically it suppresses that "no checks enabled" error you get when you disable literally all of them. so forgiving of you.
• --checks=<string> — a comma-separated list of globs with an optional - prefix. Globs get processed in order of appearance in the list. Globs with no - prefix add checks with matching names to the set; globs with the - prefix remove 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 any exists.
• --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 the .clang-tidy or a custom config file, e.g. --config-file=/some/path/myTidyConfigFile. Internally this works exactly the same way as the --config option after reading the specified config file. 🫶 Use either --config-file or --config, not both. Pick a lane, bestie.
• --dump-config — dumps the configuration in YAML format to stdout. This option can be used along with a file name (and -- if the file is outside of a project with 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. stats girl summer.
• --enable-module-headers-parsing — enables preprocessor-level module header parsing for C++20 and above, empowering specific checks to detect macro definitions within modules. > Heads up: this feature may cause performance and parsing issues and is therefore considered experimental. 💀
• --exclude-header-filter=<string> — a regular expression matching the names of the headers to exclude diagnostics from. Diagnostics from the main file of each translation unit are always displayed. Must be used together with --header-filter. Can be used together with -line-filter. This option overrides the ExcludeHeaderFilterRegex option in the .clang-tidy file, if any.
• --explain-config — for each enabled check, it explains where it's enabled — i.e. in the clang-tidy binary, the command line, or a specific configuration file. receipts, basically. 👑
• --export-fixes=<filename> — a 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> — additional argument to append to the compiler command line.
• --extra-arg-before=<string> — 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. no cap.
• --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 information about formatting styles and options. This option overrides the FormatStyle option in the .clang-tidy file, if any.

• --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 any.
• --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, like this:

[ {"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. the full roster, periodt.
• --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 any.
• --use-color — use colors in diagnostics. If 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 any. 🌈 aesthetic matters!!
• --verify-config — check the config files to ensure each check and option is recognized. it's checking your work, lovingly.
• --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 any.

---

so like, -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> ... — this specifies 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. ngl that's a lot of rules but okay we move. 💅

🎀 Parameters files

A large number of options or source files can be passed as parameter files by using @parameter-file in the command line. cute and efficient.

💜 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. command line stays winning. 👑

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

• CheckOptions — a 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.
• ExcludeHeaderFilterRegex — same as --exclude-header-filter.
• ExtraArgs — same as --extra-arg.
• ExtraArgsBefore — same as --extra-arg-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.
• 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. generational config, we love to see it.
• 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, go forth and tidy those checks 💖 ok bye, this was clang-tidy 20, from September 2026, and yeah it's CLANG-TIDY(1). slay. ✨🎀