Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753698AbcLNSN1 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 Dec 2016 13:13:27 -0500 Received: from unicorn.mansr.com ([81.2.72.234]:35448 "EHLO unicorn.mansr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751985AbcLNSN0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 Dec 2016 13:13:26 -0500 From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= To: Alexey Dobriyan Cc: piotrgregor@rsyncme.org, Linus Torvalds , Linux Kernel Subject: Re: Moratorium on coding style patches (was Re: [PATCH] include/linux/kernel.h: fixed coding style issues) References: Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:13:19 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Alexey Dobriyan's message of "Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:32:35 +0300") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2123 Lines: 47 Alexey Dobriyan writes: > OK, someone needs to say it. > > These type of patches are advertised by some people as a good way > to enter Linux kernel development. You know, to learn how the process > works, how to setup email client pipeline, to get initial feedback. > And it is true. What those people aren't saying is that the above is > about ~0.01% of what is kernel or any other project development is about. > It is the easy part. > > But the patches also create problems for those who are already in. > The very immediate is that "git-blame" stops working. It simply points > to the irrelevant commit and developer is forced to either search > manually through the history or search the web for "git-blame" options. > (maybe there is such an option but that's not the point). > > And "git-blame" usually happens in important cases: when developer > searches for a possible bugfix or wondering who wrote that crap. > > Au contraire, coding style patch is something unimportant. > Whitespace here, whitespace there, who cares. On the grand scale, > coding style compliance is important but in my experience Linux > kernel CS compliance is top notch for the project of Linux's size. > > So the tradeoff is not in the patch favour and all you need to follow > coding style is basically "indent -kr -i8 -l80" for new code. > It is then becomes non problem because editors defaults are doing > the job. > > And they create rejects against other non-coding style patches, > again slowing down people who need to fix real problems. I agree with all of that, yet I still sometimes create pure style patches. This tends to happen when I can't look at the code I'm trying to debug without wanting to claw my eyes out. In such cases, an initial cleanup patch often makes the actual fix much easier to comprehend. There's not a lot such code in the kernel, thankfully, but it does exist. > Said that, I call for a tree wide moratorium on pure coding style changes. In light of the above, I'd relax this slightly and say don't do style patches unless as a prelude to some real work. -- M?ns Rullg?rd