[Geany-devel] Remove extra whitespace at end of lines in all source files?

[Colomban Wendling]

Le 13/10/2011 00:50, Matthew Brush a écrit :
> On 11-10-12 07:14 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
>> On 12/10/2011 06:00, Matthew Brush wrote:
>>> Remove extra whitespace at end of lines in all source files.
>>>
>>> * Processed with rstrip-whitespace.py script added to scripts/
>>> directory.
>>> * Script run on all .c and .h files in src/ and plugins/ directories.
>>> * Also remove more than one newline at the end of files.
>>
>> We've mostly done this before, but I'm not sure this is a good idea. It
>> means more maintenance burden on receiving code. What's so bad about
>> trailing whitespace?
> 
> The main reasons are to avoid noise in patches, prevent patch corruption
> when sent over email, and IMO it's just good practice (ie. what people
> contributing code would expect).  If we don't care about this, then why
> care about spaces vs. tabs, spaces before function parameter braces,
> indentation, and so on?
> 
> Also, I'm not suggesting that we reject code solely because of trailing
> whitespace, just that it become something the developers do; I would
> guess that the vast majority of what I removed in that commit was caused
> by Geany developers themselves.
> 
> It takes two seconds to turn the stripping feature on in Geany or Git
> and it automatically handles the "bug" in Geany's auto-indent where it
> adds the indentation when you press enter but doesn't remove it when you
> leave the line blank.  This is where the bulk of the trailing whitespace
> came from.  As of for the extra newlines at the end of files, I think
> those are caused by a "bug" in one of the processing scripts used on
> Geany's source code (fix-alignment.pl:91 maybe).
> 
> If you really feel strongly against this, I honestly don't mind if you
> revert the commit and we can just forget about it altogeher.  FWIW, I
> did check with Colomban about this, confirming that there shouldn't be
> trailing whitespace and that it was ok to commit this, before doing so.

Actually I don't mind much whether we leave or not whitespaces (in most
of my personal projects I keep them everywhere BTW), but since it was
Geany's coding style 'til now, I'd say we should stick to it.  This
isn't so important IMHO, but I also find it better to have it consistent
over files -- though it's not as important as most indentation rules.

Ah, and I doubt this would cause much trouble with incoming patches.  (I
think) many people already strips spaces, and those who submit patches
are likely to have had a shot at HACKING.  And finally, we can either
choose not to mind if there are some, or we could quite easily drop them
anyway.

So to conclude, basically I'd say we should stick to the rule, but I
don't mind if we decide not to bother about it [1].  I just don't want
to see those ugly commits that removes tons of whitespaces additionally
to the real change.  So... just do as you want.

Regards,
Colomban


[1] And it's just whitespaces after all, we probably better concentrate
on the real code, not need to check pro and cons forever I think.