Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 209.132.180.67 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.132.180.67;
Subject: Re: [PATCH] clk: actions: Use the correct style for SPDX License
 Identifier
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc:     Nishad Kamdar <nishadkamdar@gmail.com>,
        Manivannan Sadhasivam <manivannan.sadhasivam@linaro.org>,
        Michael Turquette <mturquette@baylibre.com>,
        Stephen Boyd <sboyd@kernel.org>, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>,
        =?UTF-8?Q?Uwe_Kleine-K=c3=b6nig?= <u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de>,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-clk@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-actions@lists.infradead.org
References: <20190501070707.GA5619@nishad>
 <057d9b37-7475-1902-bce7-6d519c2e0fdf@suse.de>
 <20190502070746.GA16247@kroah.com>
 <315de620-b638-aea4-d8d2-e00f5a493625@suse.de>
 <20190502103848.GA17256@kroah.com>
From:   =?UTF-8?Q?Andreas_F=c3=a4rber?= <afaerber@suse.de>
Openpgp: preference=signencrypt
Organization: SUSE Linux GmbH
Message-ID: <f52484fc-b35b-f92a-9c7b-ce53fd731ab5@suse.de>
Date:   Thu, 2 May 2019 12:45:05 +0200
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/60.6.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <20190502103848.GA17256@kroah.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

Am 02.05.19 um 12:38 schrieb Greg Kroah-Hartman:
> On Thu, May 02, 2019 at 12:25:36PM +0200, Andreas Färber wrote:
>> Am 02.05.19 um 09:07 schrieb Greg Kroah-Hartman:
>>> On Wed, May 01, 2019 at 10:20:44PM +0200, Andreas Färber wrote:
>>>> + linux-actions
>>>>
>>>> Am 01.05.19 um 09:07 schrieb Nishad Kamdar:
>>>>> This patch corrects the SPDX License Identifier style
>>>>> in header files related to Clock Drivers for Actions Semi Socs.
>>>>> For C header files Documentation/process/license-rules.rst
>>>>> mandates C-like comments (opposed to C source files where
>>>>> C++ style should be used)
>>>> [...]
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-common.h       | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-composite.h    | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-divider.h      | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-factor.h       | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-fixed-factor.h | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-gate.h         | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-mux.h          | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-pll.h          | 2 +-
>>>>>  drivers/clk/actions/owl-reset.h        | 2 +-
>>>>>  9 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
>>>>
>>>> Where's the practical benefit of this patch? These are all private
>>>> headers used from C files, so they can handle C++ comments just fine,
>>>> otherwise we would've seen build failures.
>>>
>>> Please read Documentation/process/license-rules.rst, the section
>>> entitled "Style", for what the documented formats are for SPDX lines,
>>> depending on the file type.
>>
>> That does in no way answer my question! You conveniently dropped my
>> paragraph indicating that I understand why we would do that for public
>> headers in include/, but none of these private headers here are included
>> in .lds files. So there really seems to be no benefit of switching from
>> one style to another for in-tree code.
> 
> It should answer the question, it was "decreed" that all header files
> use /* */, and all C files use // for their SPDX lines, so we documented
> it that way.
> 
> Yes, maybe it doesn't make "sense" in that this really is only needed
> for headers that get included into asm files, which is why we had to do
> it this way, but it's better to be consistant than to have random
> breakages at times.
> 
> It's not an issue of public headers at all, sorry.
> 
> Consistency is good, as we can have automatic tools check these types of
> things, which is the only way to reliably handle the format of something
> that needs to be in every file in a project with 63,100+ different
> files.

Okay, if it's about consistency then there will be more cases to fix.

What about this one:

My interpretation of the documentation has been that I should end the
comment after the identifiers:

/* SPDX-... */
/* ...
 */

Some people deviate by doing

/* SPDX-...
 * foo
 */

So the documentation may need to be extended to clarify that for full
consistency, as well as clarify the previous scenario:
  "If a specific tool cannot handle the standard comment style, then the
   appropriate comment mechanism which the tool accepts shall be used."
To me that reads very different from what you just said above.

Thanks,
Andreas

-- 
SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah
HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)