clang-format package looking for wrong executable

Question

I'm trying to setup emacs to use the clang-format package. I have installed the clang-format package from MELPA and also have clang-format-10 (apt install only installs version 6 on Ubuntu) installed on my local machine. I also have the following lines in ~/.emacs:

(require 'clang-format)
(setq clang-format-style "file")
(setq exec-path (append exec-path '("/usr/bin/clang-format-10")))

I added the last last line because M-x clang-format-region throws the error:

Searching for program: No file or directory, clang-format

However, the clang-format package appears to still be looking for a clang-format binary without the version suffix. Also, it's worth noting I made an alias in my ~/.bashrc so clang-format points to clang-format-10, however that doesn't help me in emacs.

Answer 1

First of all, .bashrc doesn’t help since it’s for non-login shell if I remember correctly.

Secondly, I believe a “path” in exec-path should end with “bin”, like it would be in environment variable PATH. Also, /usr/bin should already be there, thus no need to add.

What you should have done is adding a symlink. You can do:

• sudo ln -sf clang-format-10 /usr/bin/clang-format if you have sudo access, OR
• ln -sf /usr/bin/clang-format-10 ~/bin/clang-format and add /home/yourusername/bin to exec-path.