+ if(popen_file == NULL) {Please make a preparatory patch which adds missing spaces between 'if' statements and '('.
I'll do a preparatory style cleanup patch of existing code if it is deemed necessary by the maintainers, but I don't think it's a good idea. The patch as it stands now simply moves existing code to another file and thus is pretty safe. Adding a preparatory patch to reformat the code is easy to mess up and raises the chances of introducing a regression.
Why not just submit patches to clean up coding style for the entire code base independent of any refactoring?
When I originally wrote checkpatch.pl it was with the intention of avoiding arguments over coding style. I see that I missed a corner case by having it not notice code moves as a special case to ignore.
-Joel
