[[nodiscard]] and KDE coding policy

[James Graham]

On Friday, July 31st, 2026 at 3:26 PM, David Redondo <kde at david-redondo.de> wrote:

> Am Freitag, 31. Juli 2026, 13:47 schrieb Harald Sitter:
> > On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 11:58 AM Tobias Fella <fella at posteo.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello everyone,
> > >
> > >
> > > On 7/31/26 2:53 AM, Jin Liu wrote:
> > > > Vlad Zahorodnii <vlad.zahorodnii at kde.org> 于2026年7月31日周五 04:22写道：
> > > >> That being said, I still don't think that adding [[nodiscard]] to
> > > >> functions such as getters is a good idea. It makes code more verbose,
> > > >> with more boilerplate, with little (imho) benefit. Stray getter calls
> > > >> are odd but the effort to avoid them is hard to justify.
> > > > Yeah, I don't think getters need `[[nodiscard]]`, for the same reason that
> > > > `std::min` and `std::move` don't have it:
> > > > 1. It's very unlikely that one would ignore the return value.
> > > > 2. Even when mistakenly ignored, there's no effect.
> > >
> > > 1. We're writing lots of code for things that aren't likely, it's a huge
> > > part of why we have compiler warnings, certain CI jobs, etc. at all.
> > > Yes, it's not likely that you're forgetting to actually do something
> > > with the getter call, but it does happen
> > >
> > > 2. Well, no: There is not going to be an evil side-effect from the
> > > invocation of the getter call, but you're also not doing the thing you
> > > wanted to do, which could lead to all sorts of problems. This is also
> > > not a theoretical problem, we have recently shipped a (small) bug
> > > because of such a mistake[1]. This is what led me to suggest adding
> > > [[nodiscard]] pretty much anywhere as long as the returned value isn't
> > > really just an optional thing.
> > >
> > >
> > > So yes, I do think we should add it to getters as well, it's a useful
> > > sanity check. That doesn't mean we have to immediately add it to all
> > > existing code or worry too much about forgetting it somewhere. But it's
> > > a good thing to aim for.
> >
> > +1
> >
> +1
> 
> David
> 
> 

+1

We can explicitly say that no one should go hunting through old code making noise because it's not there. We can even advise (note advise) against patches that just add it to old code to avoid the churn and just expect that it gets added the next time that code is touched

James