On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Ken Giusti <kgiu...@redhat.com> wrote:
> Not to fire off a religious flame-war here - but this has stuck in my craw > for awhile: > > Why is the proton C and Python code using 2 space indent? > > Two space indent does not conform with the existing QPID coding guidelines > established for C++ nor Java: > > https://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/java-coding-standards.html > https://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/cppstyleguide.html > > even python code should not be using 2 space indents, as God and Guido > intended: > > http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#indentation > > Heck - the proton-j Java code uses 4 spaces! We're not even > self-consistent! > > Sorry to bring this up - there's plenty of real work that needs to be done > for proton. But I'm OLD, and my eyes ain't what they used to be. Working > with 2 space indents isn't fun. In the case of python, it's damn painful. > > Going forward, can we please use 4 space indents? And, over time, > convert the existing codebase? > I'm not happy with the idea of going back and converting old files, at least not for any of those that I maintain. When I end up debugging code that I maintain that has other people's commits sprinkled in, I often go back and isolate them in order to to understand their effect on the original code, and this gets very difficult when you have sweeping whitespace changes. FWIW, I don't actually interpret pep-8 quite as strongly as you do. It seems more emphatic about not using tabs or 8 spaces, and it is all prefixed with these very wise words[1]. In particular note the section on consistency within files and projects being more important that adherence to pep-8. [1] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#a-foolish-consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-little-minds Given the above section, I took the liberty of counting our de-facto standard for both qpid and proton: Qpid has 56.4KLOC in 188 files using 2 space indent and 44.8KLOC in 120 files using something other than 2 space indent Proton has 18.2KLOC in 30 files using 2 space indent and 6.7KLOC in 30 files using something other than 2 space indent Now I fully admit this is of course somewhat self fulfilling as a lot of the original python code in both qpid and proton came from me, and my emacs settings default to 2 spaces if it can't guess what indent the file is using, but I would say the current defacto standard for qpid and a bit more so for proton is tilted towards 2 space. That said, I'm not opposed to using 4 space for new files, I'm just very much against changing existing code unless the bulk of that code is also going to change for other reasons. --Rafael
