Hi Tiago,
Derby approved a set of coding conventions in August, 2006, mostly to
satisfy an Apache requirement that projects should establish standards
in this area:
http://old.nabble.com/-VOTE---Approve-coding-conventions-for-the-Derby-project-to5771191.html#a5771954
The Derby conventions include a large primer published by Sun (now
Oracle) plus a couple explicit modifications to that primer. I have
never seen a reviewer even mention, let alone enforce any of the rules
in that primer. Three of the explicit modifications have earned special
mention on the checklist for new contributors:
http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/DerbyContributorChecklist These hot
buttons are:
i) A preference for 4-space tabs.
ii) Elimination of @author tags.
iii) A preference by some for 80 character lines.
In order to get a submission committed, a new contributor needs to
conform to the coding philosophy of the committer who reviews the patch.
Once in a great while, someone will rework an already committed patch to
enforce a hot button preference. There is little enthusiasm for
enforcing the Derby conventions systematically. I think this is because:
a) Most of the classes pre-date the adoption of conventions and don't
conform to them.
b) Contributors are discouraged from reformatting existing classes in
order to make them conform to the conventions. This eliminates cosmetic
diffs which complicate code archaeology.
c) To promote readability, contributors are encouraged to follow the
coding style of the class they are working on.
To answer your specific question about tabs: 4-space tab settings are
preferred but not systematically enforced.
Hope this helps,
-Rick
On 3/21/11 2:24 PM, Tiago Espinha wrote:
Hi all,
What's our (Derby's) official stance regarding the tab spacing? How
strict are we being with patches? Are we enforcing the 4-spaced tab or
are we happy with the tab-spaced tabs?
I remember when I was a GSoC student I was asked to change my settings
in Eclipse, but I seem to remember have seen patches being committed
after that with just tabs instead of spaces. Do we have an official
position on this?
Cheers,
Tiago
