On 11/26/2009 08:18 AM, Michael Matz wrote:
How, for goodness sake, can pure trailing whitespace changes, which by
necessity you can't even _see_ in an editor (except if you activate modes
that explicitely show them e.g. in different color) clean up code? Have
you looked at the patch or fallout from it? If not, why do you speak in
favor of it?
I'm an outside observer with professional ties to SCM.
This issue is similar in scope to TAB vs SPACE for indenting. Whether
you can see it or not is not indicative of whether it has downstream
effects or not.
Generally, whitespace on the end of lines is bad, and cleanup eventually
becomes necessary. It is "bad" because people will accidentally change
lines without realizing them, and these changed lines show up in patches
and annotations. This goes both ways - a lot of people browse code in vi,
and accidentally add space to the end of lines they don't even intend to
change. Or, maybe their editor automatically strips whitespace at end of
line when they re-indent. Who knows? Same happens with TAB changed to
SPACE or back and forth. Once these start to accumulate - they create
downstream consequences that multiply. You can't see it, but every
program that the file passes through *does* see them.
Is cleanup in bulk the right approach? You either clean up over time or
you do it in bulk. In my own projects, some of the designers I worked
with had horrible habits in this regard. Every second line would have
whitespace on the end. The longer it is left, the worse the effect.
As software architect for our project, I notified the team I was doing a
cleanup, and did it in bulk. Due to the notification, everything went
smooth.
It sounds like the idea should have been proposed and accepted.
Everybody would have been ready for it, and nobody would be upset. Oh well.
It's been entertaining. gcc@gcc.gnu.org is normally pretty dull to
read... :-)
Cheers,
mark
--
Mark Mielke<m...@mielke.cc>
