[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists)

[josh at joshtriplett.org]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 01:37:12PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 10:11:51 -0600
> Jonathan Corbet <corbet at lwn.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Over on linux-kernel, I just saw a newish developer being politely told
> > that a patch was unacceptable because the local variable declarations
> > were not in reverse-Christmas-tree order.  That's not in CodingStyle, and
> > it's certainly not a universal rule in the kernel; it's just one of those
> > things you have to know if you wander into certain scary neighborhoods.
> 
> As I know a few maintainers that like the "reverse-xmas-tree" order,
> perhaps we could add that to CodingStyle in a section of:
> 
> --- Some Maintainer's prefer these styles ---
> 
>  These are some extra styles that maintainers prefer. Some are strict
>  about these, others may not care. It doesn't hurt to add them.

A world of *no*.  If your style is not universal, and you can't get a
general consensus among kernel maintainers that it should be a
requirement across the entire kernel, then *no*.  We should not have
per-subsystem formatting rules.

> /*
>  * What is the question?
>  * To add a space at the top of a comment?
>  */
> 
> /* Or not to add a space at the top of a comment?
>  * That is the question!
>  */

While I'm not going to advocate that we mass-fix existing code in a
subsystem for consistent formatting, this is *exactly* the kind of thing
that we do not need any more of; one such idiosyncrasy is one too many.

- Josh Triplett