On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 8:06 PM Collin Funk <[email protected]> wrote:
> Cool, I always disliked the mix of tabs and spaces that lots of (mostly)
> older GNU code has. I think it is because both emacs and indent do it by
> default.
>
> My preference is not to use indent or similar tools (e.g., clang-format)
> because it is a hassle if all contributors do not have the same version
> available, since their outputs aren't stable in my experience.
Indeed. Early in my career I collaborated with a colleague who
always set up his terminal with a non-standard tab-width of 4 because
he wanted to use an indentation-level of 4 for nested braces. So I
learned pretty early on that tabs are a frequent source of minor
irritation. Winnie was right.
Colin's example:
[before indent]
> struct timespec ts = { .tm_sec = 0, .tm_nsec = 0 };
[after indent]
> struct timespec ts = {.tm_sec = 0,.tm_nsec = 0 };
>
> Just figured I would bring this up for your consideration. Not trying to
> demand you disable it or anything like that. :)
Actually I have no particular beliefs on this. But I don't think
this is configurable in GNU indent (unless -sar does what you want).
GNU indent what we get in gnulib's maint.mk by default. But if GNU
indent allowed this to be configurable, I would not object to a
change. Bernhard, do you have a preference?
James.
