[[nodiscard]] and KDE coding policy

[David Redondo]

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