[[nodiscard]] and KDE coding policy

[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