[parted-devel] Re: indentation changes render parted/ui.c nearly unmergeable

[Jim Meyering]

Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray <debarshi.ray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I see that your recent indentation changes modify nearly every line
>> of parted/ui.c.  Did you realize that with such a change, nearly any
>> delta from 1.8's ui.c will no longer apply to the one on the trunk?
>> I.e., there will *always* be a merge conflict for any change to that file.
>
> Yes. It occurred to me, but since Otavio said it would be alright to make the
> indentation changes in a separate patch I thought it would be fine. Such
> formatting related changes have been intrusive in the past too. eg.,
> 'commit 93ca20d8aebd0d04dbb00b86a2903c992e59a96b' on the master branch. This
> problem may occur there also.
>
>> This means that either the exact same changes should be made to the copy
>> of ui.c on any other branch likely to share patches with the trunk, or
>> (more likely) the indentation changes should just be backed out.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Here's what I'll probably be doing:
>> 1) identify which style of indentation (spaces or TABs) applies to each file
>> 2) if it's uniformly one or the other, codify that via comments for emacs and
>>      vim at the bottom of the file
>> 3) if it's nearly uniformly one or the other, make the few changes and codify
>>     as in #2
>> 4) if there's a significant mix, convert to spaces-only[*] and codify
>
> Do we have a coding style for each file or one for the whole tree? I would
> prefer a uniform coding style for the entire tree, and then have comments
> in them for Emacs and Vim.

Above, I'm talking only about one small aspect of coding style:
whether to indent with spaces or TABs.

> This is because I feel having a separate style for every file would only
> lead to more confusion and lesser readability. Each file is not totally
> self-contained, and one has to consult others while working on one of them.
> Moreover there is the possibility of multiple subtly and not so subtly
> different coding styles in the entire code base.

I agree, but I'm not talking about formatting.  Just indentation,
in an attempt to make the status quo a little more workable, with
minimum impact to ongoing development.

> Maybe we need to modify/improve/enforce
> http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/snippets/CodingStyle at some point of
> time.

I too would like to switch to the "GNU" coding style, but
any sane style, as long as it is uniform and mechanically verifiable,
would be nearly as good.

>> Depending on how many files are "irregular", I might add comments
>> only to the minority, with the assumption that developers will
>> use the proper settings to do the right thing in the "regular" case.
>
> I would rather have a regular style in every file, and comments to avoid the
> odd deviation. :-)

So would I, but wholesale reformatting would cause serious
disruption among those who are actually trying to apply patches
and merge fixes from one branch to another.

> The problem is that if we want to enforce a uniform coding style throughout
> the code base, there will be the odd file (like parted/ui.c) which will need
> to be majorly re-formatted.

If we were all to agree to reformat *both* the stable branch and
the trunk, then we'd be done, modulo any pending patches relative
to the pre-global-format date.  Modulo the little detail of deciding
on a formatting style, and installing a hook or two to help people
check and adhere to the standard.