Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757884AbXI2T4v (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:56:51 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754904AbXI2T4p (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:56:45 -0400 Received: from mail.fieldses.org ([66.93.2.214]:57976 "EHLO fieldses.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751397AbXI2T4o (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:56:44 -0400 Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:56:38 -0400 To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Erez Zadok , akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] 0/3 coding standards documentation/code updates Message-ID: <20070929195638.GA12011@fieldses.org> References: <11910151223214-git-send-email-ezk@cs.sunysb.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-11) From: "J. Bruce Fields" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1793 Lines: 39 On Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 11:18:05AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > I'm not very happy with this. > > "CodingStyle" should be about the big issues, not about details. Yes, > we've messed that up over the years, but let's not continue that. > > In other words, I'd suggest *removing* lines from CodingStyle, not adding > them. The file has already gone from a "good general principles" to "lots > of stupid details". Let's not make it worse. It'd be nice to split the current CodingStyle into two documents: - A shorter CodingStyle that gives the spirit of the style (short functions, minimal nesting, logic as straightforward as possible, etc.), and addresses the most commonly repeated mistakes, without so much detail that people's eyes glaze over. You want to be able to recommend it to your students (or whoever) in reasonable confidence that they'll actually read it and have fun (leave the jokes in!). Currently I'm suspicious that it's becoming something that everybody recommends but noone bothers to sit down and read anymore unless they're working on it. - A CodingStyleReference that's just a long dry list of rules, organized to make it easy to look up an individual rule when needed. That'd also take the pressure of CodingStyle to accept every new detail. It'd be a start just to revert CodingStyle to its original content and move the rest to CodingStyleReference. But someone would want to skim through the CodingStyle history for any legimate corrections that we want to keep. --b. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/