Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 19:51:43 +0930 From: smckay@internode.on.net To: "Eitan Adler" <eadler@freebsd.org>, "Juli Mallett" <jmallett@FreeBSD.org> Cc: svn-src-head@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: svn commit: r250431 - head/usr.bin/xargs Message-ID: <65172.1368181303@internode.on.net>
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On Fri 10/05/13 17:50 , Juli Mallett jmallett@FreeBSD.org sent: > Eitan, > > Are other changes coming to xargs for which these style changes make > sense? If not, I'd say that style changes which only adjust vertical > whitespace, especially those which mostly add vertical whitespace at > the start of functions with no local variables (which is one of the > most archaic and unusual things style(9) requires), are probably the > most gratuitous and silly style changes to make. That doesn't even > rise to being a style change, it's just a whitespace change. And I > really do believe that vertical whitespace changes are much, much > sillier than horizontal whitespace changes. Juli, it seems we're bothered by the same thing here: that at least some of the vertical white space requirements of style(9) are silly and (rightly) widely ignored. So I think we should change the guide to fix this rather than damaging a lot of perfectly readable code. I'd like to emphasise that I'm not even slightly cranky at Eitan for his commit since we committers are presumed to have agreed to follow style(9) and he's just changing code to match the official style. My complaint is that the official style isn't useful in this small regard and should be changed. > (Watch for standalone commits from people who used to be > very active developers who have recently hit the threshold for getting > commit bit reaper E-Mails. They're fairly instructive in the art of > making occasional insignificant changes for the sake of making > changes.) Well, I used to be a low activity developer and have transitioned to being a very low activity developer, so I know the reaper and the temptation of a quick fix to get it off your back. However it's better to let the reaper pester you than to make a low quality commit. After all, if you haven't anything new and interesting to add, there is always that convenient list of bugs that could be fixed... Cheers, Stephen.
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