Mike Stover wrote:
Re: code-style - I'm not a big fan of standards that insist on X number of spaces, braces have to be here and here, etc. I don't understand why that needs to be standard when, at the push of a button, my IDE makes the code look exactly the way I want it to look. If you don't have such an IDE, there are lots of independent packages that do it, JRefactory being one of the most interesting (available at sourceforge). The only thing I'd like to see is the use of tabs, so no one has to do anything special to get their spacing right.There is no problem to get the sources formatted the way you like it, everybody has an IDE or tool to do this. But the point is: if everybody does formatting the way he/she likes it and commits these reformatted sources to the cvs you will get lots of diffs not because of changes in the implementation but because of reformatting and therefore it is hard to see the changes that really matter. In the long run you save a lot of time by having a styleguide. Of course this requires some compromises, but that's is the way team work goes. So if there is a styleguide we can reuse from another jakarta project we should just do it. Otherwise we have to find our own.
That, however, just points out the real problem - having coding standards doesn't automatically make things easier for everyone. It makes things a pain for those who "lose" the debate, and easier for those who win. I'd rather see everyone win. Get yourself a simple code formatter, and use it on files you edit, if you like.
Oliver
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