[ARROW-15248] [C++][Docs] Improve instructions for C++ formatting/linting

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 7.0.0
• Component/s: C++, Documentation
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/30744
• Assignee: David Li
• Reporter: David Li
• Created: 04/Jan/22 20:17
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 11:35
• Resolved: 10/Jan/22 13:55

Description

Code Style, Linting, and CI could use the following:

• clang-format is implicitly described, but should be made an explicit requirement.
• We should describe how to format C++ code with archery.
• We should describe how to format/lint C++ code with the CMake build.
• We should describe how Archery discovers the clang-format/cpplint executables.
• We should describe how to use the GitHub Actions bot to try to format code.
• If the wrong version of clang-format or clang-tidy is found, we should explicitly note that instead of just saying 'not found'
• We should clarify that the exact version of these tools is needed
• Link to the LLVM downloads since it may not be obvious where to get all these linter tools

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #12085