Remove recommendation for ABAP Formatter

[sautermi0]

Until now, the guide recommends the usage of the ABAP Formatter. From my perspective, the ABAPCleaner is superior and is getting more and more features, so the guide should recommend this.

What do you think about this?

[larshp]

A: use of the pretty printer can be enforced, https://docs.abapopenchecks.org/checks/06/
B: the pretty printer is standard tooling
C: there is no concept for handling changes
D: it totally misses the feedback loop
E: encouraging automatic rewriting of eg. a 5000 line class is more harmful than good IMHO

[ConjuringCoffee]

I think this should be the same as before: Always use your team's formatter settings. 😉

[ConjuringCoffee]

Suggested change

	Some of them might not be covered by automated code formatting tools, such as ABAP Formatter or ABAPCleaner, so manual effort to reformat statements might be necessary, but we recommend sticking with automated formatting as dar a s possible for the sake of consistency.
	Some of them might not be covered by automated code formatting tools, such as ABAP Formatter or ABAP Cleaner, so manual effort to reformat statements might be necessary, but we recommend sticking with automated formatting as much as possible for the sake of consistency.

[ConjuringCoffee]

I generally support recommending the use of the ABAP Cleaner, but I think some more guidance and nuance is required.

• In whatever way you do formatting, you should use your team's settings. This applies to both the ABAP Formatter and the ABAP Cleaner.
• For the ABAP Cleaner, it should be encouraged to use a shared profile.
• I'm missing some kind of guidance regarding the use of the ABAP Cleaner in files where the ABAP Cleaner would change a lot. Similar to what Lars said, it could be harmful to blindly do the clean-up on large, old files.

[larshp]

is it clean to dig into exactly how and which tooling to use? eg. it currently doesn't recommend to use ATC/Code Inspector, does SAP recommend using exceptions or not, and how to, use central ATC or not? should developers use SE24 or Eclipse or vscode or notepad to write clean code? It opens for an endless list of questions on the exact tooling. I've yet to understand what exactly SAP means by Clean Code, but is it tooling dependent?

I'd suggest to change the section to "Use common tooling inside the team", and then link to the tools sections for options and then each tool has to explain/recommend exactly how to use it.

[thebestabapdeveloper]

It seems that using a team-wide ABAP cleaner profile and sharing it would be a more effective option.