[MERGE] whitespace normalization
Ben Finney
bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au
Fri Jul 25 05:19:52 BST 2008
Aaron Bentley <aaron at aaronbentley.com> writes:
> we try to improve the codebase gradually. If a line has trailing
> whitespace, we wait until we need to change the line anyhow, and
> then strip the trailing whitespace at the same time.
Thanks, this does explain why you prefer to see the changes
separately, instead of a single "fix whitespace" patch. I don't see
that it in any way prevents spurious whitespace-related conflicts,
though.
The trouble is, I don't see what's preventing regressions from making
their way in. If it's up to each person to configure their editor
appropriately, but there's nothing mechanically preventing whitespace
regressions from making their way into the codebase, I don't see how
these spurious conflicts over whitespace regressions are prevented.
That is, if Bazaar developer Albert has their editor configured to fix
whitespace automatically on files so he doesn't need to rely on
error-prone manual whitespace editing, what prevents spurious
conflicts with existing changes on lines that didn't already conform?
Are you saying developers on such a code base should *not*
automatically reindent and strip trailing whitespace from files, even
though that would conform to the preferred style of the code base?
That, instead, developers should always and forever rely on
error-prone manual whitespace editing, in order not to cause "spurious
conflicts" with lines that don't yet conform to the style guide?
--
\ “I fly Air Bizarre. You buy a combination one-way round-trip |
`\ ticket. Leave any Monday, and they bring you back the previous |
_o__) Friday. That way you still have the weekend.” —Steven Wright |
Ben Finney
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