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Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 14:49:37 +1000
From: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
To: Dave Jones <davej@suse.de>
Cc: bcrl@redhat.com, dalecki@evision.ag, torvalds@transmeta.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] 2.5.27 enum
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On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 14:27:04 +0200
Dave Jones <davej@suse.de> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 04:01:18PM -0400, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
>  > On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 12:53:21PM +0200, Marcin Dalecki wrote:
>  > > - Fix a bunch of places where there are trailing "," at the
>  > >    end of enum declarations.
>  > 
>  > Please don't apply this.  By leaving the trailing "," on enums, additional 
>  > values can be added by merely inserting an additional + line in a patch, 
>  > otherwise there are excess conflicts when multiple patches add values to 
>  > the enum.
> 
> Gratuitous 'cleanups' with no real redeeming feature also have another
> downside which a lot of people seem to overlook.  They completely screws
> over anyone who also has a pending patch in that area if Linus applies it.

Yes.  It particularly sucks on the "maintainerless" core code which is always
in flux.  This is also why I generally reject whitespace-cleanup patches,
and originally rejected the "doesnt" patches (I got convinced by the pedants).

OTOH, 90% of kernel code is copied from elsewhere, so janitorial cleanups
*are* worthwhile, as long as they are one-liners, or fix a real problem.

Rusty.
-- 
   there are those who do and those who hang on and you don't see too
   many doers quoting their contemporaries.  -- Larry McVoy
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