Mixing whitespace and topical changes

Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Reiner Steib]

Didier,

please avoid committing lots of whitespace changes mixed with topical
changes.

Cf. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.commits/5166

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> please avoid committing lots of whitespace changes mixed with topical
> changes.

                Reiner,

        I can understand your concern (I guess it mainly has to do with
synchronizing between the GNU Emacs version and the CVS version), but
I'm not ready to change my setup (all whitespace cleanup is done
automatically and I never see them in diffs) until this issue has been
officially resolved. I've tried to raise it several times in the past
but didn't get any interest from anybody. Note that I will accept
whatever decision the majority adopts, even if it goes against me :-)

Let me restate my position: I believe that the right thing to do is to
have whitespace-cleanup on write-file-hooks for everybody committing to
Gnus. This is simple to achieve, this effectively removes any such
problems and this makes the files [automatically] cleaner. There's also
the question of the info files on which I only got a "I've heard that it
is better this way" sort of message.[1]


Sorry to be a little pushy on this, but whitespace.el functions on a
major-mode basis and not on a file-name basis, so I would need some
trickery to make it stop working on Gnus files, so I really want a
discussion about this before.




Footnotes: 
[1]  FWIW, texinfo-mode is on whitespace-modes by default, and I'd never
heard any complaint about this until a few days ago.

-- 
Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <muxr6qk31dc.fsf@uzeb.lrde.epita.fr> Didier Verna wrote:
> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

>> please avoid committing lots of whitespace changes mixed with topical
>> changes.

>                 Reiner,

>         I can understand your concern (I guess it mainly has to do with
> synchronizing between the GNU Emacs version and the CVS version), but
> I'm not ready to change my setup (all whitespace cleanup is done
> automatically and I never see them in diffs) until this issue has been
> officially resolved. I've tried to raise it several times in the past
> but didn't get any interest from anybody. Note that I will accept
> whatever decision the majority adopts, even if it goes against me :-)

I did the same before, but now I keep clean only things that I
changed.  It is enough for me that Lars ever said to me "Don't
use whitespace.el or equivalent when changing Gnus.".  IIRC, he
said he agrees to make source code clean all together but it
should be done independently to topical changes.  So, I don't
mix whitespace changes and topical changes as much as possible.
Or else, not only the maintainers who check the validity of
changes but also people who read CVS diffs will be bothered if
there are such changes.  (Actually I was sometimes annoyed when
I had been merging Gnus' changes into Semi-gnus in the past.)

Making source code clean is generally good.  But I think it
should be done line by line manually at least in Gnus.  What do
you think about this?

(insert "One space character is here> 
	")

It is a bad habit of course, though.

> Let me restate my position: I believe that the right thing to do is to
> have whitespace-cleanup on write-file-hooks for everybody committing to
> Gnus. This is simple to achieve, this effectively removes any such
> problems and this makes the files [automatically] cleaner. There's also
> the question of the info files on which I only got a "I've heard that it
> is better this way" sort of message.[1]

> Sorry to be a little pushy on this, but whitespace.el functions on a
> major-mode basis and not on a file-name basis, so I would need some
> trickery to make it stop working on Gnus files, so I really want a
> discussion about this before.

> Footnotes:
> [1]  FWIW, texinfo-mode is on whitespace-modes by default, and I'd never
> heard any complaint about this until a few days ago.

Let me write repeatedly; please don't use tabs in texi files.
Especially for sections in which the indentation is meaningful,
like @lisp ... @end lisp.

Regards,

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> wrote:

> I did the same before, but now I keep clean only things that I
> changed. It is enough for me that Lars ever said to me "Don't use
> whitespace.el or equivalent when changing Gnus.". IIRC, he said he
> agrees to make source code clean all together but it should be done
> independently to topical changes.

        Who's Lars ? ;-)


> So, I don't mix whitespace changes and topical changes as much as
> possible. Or else, not only the maintainers who check the validity of
> changes but also people who read CVS diffs will be bothered if there
> are such changes.

        But my point is that 1/ if all CVS committers keep files clean
automatically, the situation would not happen, and 2/ even if it does,
you don't have to see the whitespaces difference; there are options in
diff and such to just ignore them.


> Making source code clean is generally good. But I think it should be
> done line by line manually at least in Gnus. What do you think about
> this?
>
> (insert "One space character is here> 
> 	")
>
> It is a bad habit of course, though.

        You're gonna have to give me a more convincing example :-)


> Let me write repeatedly; please don't use tabs in texi files. 
> Especially for sections in which the indentation is meaningful, like
> @lisp ... @end lisp.

        Again, please show me *precisely* a problematic example.

-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <muxhcrf4gmv.fsf@uzeb.lrde.epita.fr> Didier Verna wrote:

> Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> wrote:

>> I did the same before, but now I keep clean only things that I
>> changed. It is enough for me that Lars ever said to me "Don't use
>> whitespace.el or equivalent when changing Gnus.". IIRC, he said he
>> agrees to make source code clean all together but it should be done
>> independently to topical changes.

>         Who's Lars ? ;-)

I honor him as the founder of Gnus.

>> So, I don't mix whitespace changes and topical changes as much as
>> possible. Or else, not only the maintainers who check the validity of
>> changes but also people who read CVS diffs will be bothered if there
>> are such changes.

>         But my point is that 1/ if all CVS committers keep files clean
> automatically, the situation would not happen, and 2/ even if it does,
> you don't have to see the whitespaces difference; there are options in
> diff and such to just ignore them.

Good point.  How do we urge all to do so?  For instance, all
should set `indent-tabs-mode' to t, all should add a whitespace
function to hooks, etc.  It doesn't seem to be easy to me to
achieve it, similar to persuading you not to use whitespace.el.
Otherwise, can it be realized using ``Local Variables''?

>> Making source code clean is generally good. But I think it should be
>> done line by line manually at least in Gnus. What do you think about
>> this?
>>
>> (insert "One space character is here>
>> 	")
>>
>> It is a bad habit of course, though.

>         You're gonna have to give me a more convincing example :-)

>> Let me write repeatedly; please don't use tabs in texi files.
>> Especially for sections in which the indentation is meaningful, like
>> @lisp ... @end lisp.

>         Again, please show me *precisely* a problematic example.

I've posted it.  See this article:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/64465

Regards,

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> wrote:

>>         Who's Lars ? ;-)
>
> I honor him as the founder of Gnus.

        You're aware I was joking right ? :-)


> Good point. How do we urge all to do so ?

        How many of us are there ? Is this such a big deal ?

(require 'whitespace)
(add-hook 'write-file-hooks #'(lambda () (whitespace-cleanup) nil))


> It doesn't seem to be easy to me to achieve it, similar to persuading
> you not to use whitespace.el.

        I might eventually give up, for instance when I start realizing
that this conversation takes me more time than to actually change my
setup :-) But you admit yourself that file cleanup is a good thing...


> Otherwise, can it be realized using ``Local Variables''?

Sure, everything's possible with eval: ...


>>         Again, please show me *precisely* a problematic example.
>
> I've posted it.  See this article:
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/64465

        OK, for some reason, I missed this message. My apologies.

-- 
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Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

I wrote:

>         OK, for some reason, I missed this message. My apologies.

Actually, the texinfo documentation clearly demonstrates that I have no
excuses:


     *Caution:* Do not use tabs in a Texinfo file!  TeX uses
     variable-width fonts, which means that it cannot predefine a tab
     to work in all circumstances.  Consequently, TeX treats tabs like
     single spaces, and that is not what they look like.  Furthermore,
     `makeinfo' does nothing special with tabs, and thus a tab character
     in your input file may appear differently in the output.

     To avoid this problem, Texinfo mode causes GNU Emacs to insert
     multiple spaces when you press the <TAB> key.

     Also, you can run `untabify' in Emacs to convert tabs in a region
     to multiple spaces.

     Don't use tabs.


-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <muxfy6zz6qi.fsf@uzeb.lrde.epita.fr> Didier Verna wrote:

> Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> wrote:

>>>         Who's Lars ? ;-)
>>
>> I honor him as the founder of Gnus.

>         You're aware I was joking right ? :-)

Yes, I didn't believe you don't know him. ;-)

>> Good point. How do we urge all to do so ?

>         How many of us are there ? Is this such a big deal ?

> (require 'whitespace)
> (add-hook 'write-file-hooks #'(lambda () (whitespace-cleanup) nil))

Is it effective even if a person has set `indent-tabs-mode' to
nil?  I know there is at least one person who does it in the
developers.  In addition, doesn't `whitespace-auto-cleanup' have
to be set to t?  Moreover, we will probably need to confirm there
is no difference between the Emacs version of whitespace.el  and
the XEmacs version of whitespace.el.  Oh, we should pull
`texinfo-mode' out from `whitespace-modes', or use some way to
make texi files not have tabs.

I can accept them if those tools mostly work fine and maintainers
and developers, including Lars, agree.  Though, we might not be
able to include people who usually don't subscribe to this list.
(All the Emacs developers can modify Emacs' Gnus, of which changes
are merged into No Gnus.)

>> It doesn't seem to be easy to me to achieve it, similar to persuading
>> you not to use whitespace.el.

>         I might eventually give up, for instance when I start realizing
> that this conversation takes me more time than to actually change my
> setup :-) But you admit yourself that file cleanup is a good thing...

>> Otherwise, can it be realized using ``Local Variables''?

> Sure, everything's possible with eval: ...

I think it is the best way, since what have to do is only to say
"Please accept Local Variables anyway.".  BTW, does XEmacs work
with all cases?  AFAIK, the coding cookie in the Local Variables
section is ignored if a file is larger than 3000 bytes (see
code-files.el in XEmacs 21.4 or files.el in XEmacs 21.5).

Regards,

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Miles Bader]

Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org> writes:
>         How many of us are there ? Is this such a big deal ?
>
> (require 'whitespace)
> (add-hook 'write-file-hooks #'(lambda () (whitespace-cleanup) nil))

Er, this applies to _every_ file, meaning that Gnus hackers will start
messing up every other package they hack on.

They could implement some sort of filename-specific filter so that the
hook only applies to Gnus, but that of course is an extra bit of
annoyance, and in fact it's exactly the same thing you claimed was too
annoying for you to do!

I think this is a non-starter.

-Miles

-- 
What the fuck do white people have to be blue about!?  Banana Republic ran
out of Khakis?  The Espresso Machine is jammed?  Hootie and The Blowfish are
breaking up??!  Shit, white people oughtta understand, their job is to GIVE
people the blues, not to get them!    -- George Carlin

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> They could implement some sort of filename-specific filter so that the
> hook only applies to Gnus, but that of course is an extra bit of
> annoyance, and in fact it's exactly the same thing you claimed was too
> annoying for you to do!

        Point missed. Try again !

-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Miles Bader]

Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org> writes:
>> They could implement some sort of filename-specific filter so that the
>> hook only applies to Gnus, but that of course is an extra bit of
>> annoyance, and in fact it's exactly the same thing you claimed was too
>> annoying for you to do!
>
>         Point missed. Try again !

Snarky comments don't help your case.

If you think I missed your point, then please say _why_.

-Miles

-- 
We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-Oscar Wilde

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Apr 16 2007, Didier Verna wrote:

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
>
>> please avoid committing lots of whitespace changes mixed with topical
>> changes.
>
>                 Reiner,
>
>         I can understand your concern (I guess it mainly has to do with
> synchronizing between the GNU Emacs version and the CVS version),

- Synchronizing also happens between the trunk and v5-10 (i.e. 5.10.6
  ... 5.10.nn).  Introducing lots of whitespace changes in the trunk
  will make it much more likely that merging bug-fixes from v5-10 to
  the trunk fails.  This puts additional burden on Miles.

  When I integrated Oort Gnus in Emacs 22, I've spent much time do
  clean up the problems because we didn't follow Emacs conventions
  closely (e.g. properly attributing ChangeLog entries).  As long as
  Miles is doing the syncing semi-automatically, we will not run into
  this trouble again for No Gnus.  Additionally we get longer active
  maintainance of the stable series for free (BTW, also XEmacs
  benefits from this, see 5.10.8 in the prerelease packages).  As the
  syncing is very important for the future development of Gnus, we
  *must not* make Miles' job more complicated than necessary.

  The fact that doing mass whitespace change (and even mixing them
  with topical changes) makes syncing harder, already is a
  k.o. argument against switching to such a policy.

- Unrelated whitespace changes make many CVS operations less useful
  (diff, annotate, ...).  E.g. in your recent commits, it was hard for
  me to identify the topical changes.  I had to add `-w' temporarily
  to `vc-diff-switches' to recognize the topical changes.

- Automatic whitespace removal may even lead to wrong code...

,----[ flow-fill.el ]
| revision 7.13
| date: 2005/10/27 17:55:26;  author: rsteib;  state: Exp;  lines: +35 -30
| (fill-flowed-encode-tests): Use concatenated string to protect trailing
| whitespace.
| ----------------------------
| revision 7.12
| date: 2005/10/27 17:36:02;  author: rsteib;  state: Exp;  lines: +9 -9
| (fill-flowed-encode-tests): Restore trailing
| whitespace removed in revision 7.8.
`----

  Well, this was some code for testing, but it may also change "? " to
  "?" or similar (IIRC).

- As Gnus is part of Emacs we should follow the same policies whenever
  possible.

  * It's consensus among Emacs developers _not_ to do mass whitespace
    removal without prior coordination.

  * It's consensus among Emacs developers to use the Emacs defaults
    for editing Emacs files (e.g. fill-column, tab-width, coding
    style, ...).  `whitespace-cleanup' in `write-file-hooks' is not
    the default in Emacs.

> but I'm not ready to change my setup (all whitespace cleanup is done
> automatically and I never see them in diffs) until this issue has
> been officially resolved. I've tried to raise it several times in
> the past but didn't get any interest from anybody. Note that I will
> accept whatever decision the majority adopts, even if it goes
> against me :-)

Didier, in the past few years, I've never seen any other Gnus
developer committing mixed changes except you.  The only
discussions[*] on ding about this topic were initiated after your
commits, BTW.  In these discussions, at least four developers
(Katsumi, Miles, Romain and me) have expressed concerns about or
argued against these changes.  Beside yourself, nobody argued in favor
of those "by-the-way whitespace changes".

If also Larsi has said "Don't use whitespace.el or equivalent when
changing Gnus." (as Katsumi mentioned), isn't this sufficient to
convince you?

> Let me restate my position: I believe that the right thing to do is to
> have whitespace-cleanup on write-file-hooks for everybody committing to
> Gnus. 

I agree that we should _not introduce_ trailing whitespace.

> This is simple to achieve, this effectively removes any such
> problems and this makes the files [automatically] cleaner. There's
> also the question of the info files on which I only got a "I've
> heard that it is better this way" sort of message.[1]
>
> Sorry to be a little pushy on this, but whitespace.el functions on a
> major-mode basis and not on a file-name basis, so I would need some
> trickery to make it stop working on Gnus files, so I really want a
> discussion about this before.

You are kind of arguing that we should change our policy because of a
bug/missing feature in `whitespace.el'.  BTW, instead of...
(add-hook 'write-file-hooks #'(lambda () (whitespace-cleanup) nil))
... it should be simple enough to add check `default-directory' and
don't switch it on if it is not /foo/bar/gnus.

> Footnotes: 
> [1]  FWIW, texinfo-mode is on whitespace-modes by default, and I'd never
> heard any complaint about this until a few days ago.

As we already have discussed[*], it often makes the formatted info
files ugly (e.g. example lisp code).

Bye, Reiner.

[*] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/64459
    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.commits/3222/focus=60498
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> - Synchronizing also happens between the trunk and v5-10 [...]

>   The fact that doing mass whitespace change (and even mixing them
>   with topical changes) makes syncing harder, already is a
>   k.o. argument against switching to such a policy.
>
> - Unrelated whitespace changes make many CVS operations less useful
>   (diff, annotate, ...). [...]

        You're missing the point: you're arguing that mixing whitespace
and topical changes together is a bad thing. Of course. What I'm arguing
is that whitespace cleanness is a good thing, and that if all committers
took care of it locally, the files would always be whitespace-clean, and
would never see the problem again.[1]


> - Automatic whitespace removal may even lead to wrong code...

        Again, not very convincing. Once on approx. 135000 lines of code...


> - As Gnus is part of Emacs we should follow the same policies whenever
>   possible.
>
>   * It's consensus among Emacs developers _not_ to do mass whitespace
>     removal without prior coordination.
>
>   * It's consensus among Emacs developers to use the Emacs defaults
>     for editing Emacs files (e.g. fill-column, tab-width, coding
>     style, ...).  `whitespace-cleanup' in `write-file-hooks' is not
>     the default in Emacs.

        Now, this part really upsets me :-( (this has nothing to do with
the old XEmacs / GNU Emacs war in which I never participated, nore
wanted to BTW). Gnus is an independant project, maintained in an
independant CVS archive, by independant developpers. I don't give a sh*t
about how the GNU Emacs guys do their job and I shouldn't have to. This
is almost as hilarious as the "backend back-end back end or was it
BackEnd" troll.


> Didier, in the past few years, I've never seen any other Gnus
> developer committing mixed changes except you.

        Sure, I was the only one to properly whitespace-clean my files
after editing.


> Beside yourself, nobody argued in favor of those "by-the-way
> whitespace changes".

        So what ? When I think the majority is wrong, I try to convince
the majority. Wouldn't you ?


> If also Larsi has said "Don't use whitespace.el or equivalent when
> changing Gnus." (as Katsumi mentioned), isn't this sufficient to
> convince you?

        No.


> I agree that we should _not introduce_ trailing whitespace.

        Oh, I see. Now we're talking. And how do you propose to ensure
that this is the case ? I propose a whitespace-cleanup in
write-file-hooks; that way you don't have to think about it. Does that
ring a bell ?


> You are kind of arguing that we should change our policy because of a
> bug/missing feature in `whitespace.el'.

        Again, you're missing the point. My point is that files should
*always* be whitespace-clean. whitespace.el is just a tool. I don't care
about the tool.




        OK, you made an illegitimate yet strong point. I'm obviously not
going to make the GNU Emacs guys change their way, and I don't want to
make anybody's job harder, so I'll fix my setup. Congrats though. You've
just ruined my day with that "Gnus is part of Emacs" bullshit. :-(





Footnotes: 
[1]  Please don't reply that if I stopped nuking whitespaces, there
would be no more problem either :-) 

-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 132 bytes --]


        If anyone's interested, here's a small overload on top of
whitespace.el[1] to customize the behavior on a per-file basis.


[-- Attachment #2: whitespace-rc.el --]
[-- Type: application/emacs-lisp, Size: 2090 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 358 bytes --]




Footnotes: 
[1]  $Id: whitespace.el,v 1.3 2005/03/25 17:09:08 aidan Exp $

-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Apr 18 2007, Didier Verna wrote:

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
>
>> - Synchronizing also happens between the trunk and v5-10 [...]
>
>>   The fact that doing mass whitespace change (and even mixing them
>>   with topical changes) makes syncing harder, already is a
>>   k.o. argument against switching to such a policy.
>>
>> - Unrelated whitespace changes make many CVS operations less useful
>>   (diff, annotate, ...). [...]
>
>         You're missing the point: you're arguing that mixing whitespace
> and topical changes together is a bad thing. Of course. What I'm arguing
> is that whitespace cleanness is a good thing, and that if all committers
> took care of it locally, the files would always be whitespace-clean, and
> would never see the problem again.[1]

The "problem" (files not being "whitespace clean") is minor.  Trying
to enforce it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages of the "cleaning up".

>> - As Gnus is part of Emacs we should follow the same policies whenever
>>   possible.
>>
>>   * It's consensus among Emacs developers _not_ to do mass whitespace
>>     removal without prior coordination.
>>
>>   * It's consensus among Emacs developers to use the Emacs defaults
>>     for editing Emacs files (e.g. fill-column, tab-width, coding
>>     style, ...).  `whitespace-cleanup' in `write-file-hooks' is not
>>     the default in Emacs.
>
>         Now, this part really upsets me :-( [...]. Gnus is an
> independant project, 

If Gnus wasn't a part of Emacs, we would not have to require a
copyright assignment for non-trivial contributions (you also signed
it, so you should be aware of it).

Lars even considers releases such as 5.10.* as "beta" and the version
included in Emacs as "final"...

,----[ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/54341 ]
| From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
| Date: 2003-10-18 13:53:41 GMT
| 
| Derrell.Lipman <at> UnwiredUniverse.com writes:
| 
| > The README file in the gnus-5.10.2 obtained from the US mirror this evening
| > contains the statement, "This packages contains a *beta* version of Gnus."
| > (emphasis added).
| 
| Yes, that's true.  Gnus 5.10 is beta, Gnus 5.11 will be production
| code.  :-)
`----

,----[ README ]
| This package contains a beta version of Gnus (beta because the final version
| is the one included in Emacs). [...]
`----

> maintained in an independant CVS archive, 

With the syncing from and to Emacs started 2004, it's not really
independent anymore.  Lars explicitly agreed to this and gave Miles
write access to the Gnus repositories for this reason.

> by independant developpers.

> I don't give a sh*t about how the GNU Emacs guys do their job and I
> shouldn't have to. This is almost as hilarious as the "backend
> back-end back end or was it BackEnd" troll.

>> Didier, in the past few years, I've never seen any other Gnus
>> developer committing mixed changes except you.
>
>         Sure, I was the only one to properly whitespace-clean my files
> after editing.

For trailing whitespace, this is not true.

>> Beside yourself, nobody argued in favor of those "by-the-way
>> whitespace changes".
>
>         So what ? When I think the majority is wrong, I try to convince
> the majority. Wouldn't you ?

Note that this was a reply to...
>>> Note that I will accept whatever decision the majority adopts
... so I tried to point out that the majority (at least of those who
participated in the previous discussions) doesn't agree.

[ You may even replace Emacs developers with Gnus developers in the
  paragraph above that upset you. ]

>> If also Larsi has said "Don't use whitespace.el or equivalent when
>> changing Gnus." (as Katsumi mentioned), isn't this sufficient to
>> convince you?
>
>         No.
>
>> I agree that we should _not introduce_ trailing whitespace.
>
>         Oh, I see. Now we're talking. 

_Not introducing_ trailing whitespace is different to "cleanup"
leading spaces to tabs.

> And how do you propose to ensure that this is the case ?  I propose
> a whitespace-cleanup in write-file-hooks; that way you don't have to
> think about it. Does that ring a bell ?

If we'd agree that every Gnus developer should follows your proposal:
How do you propose to ensure this?

>> You are kind of arguing that we should change our policy because of a
>> bug/missing feature in `whitespace.el'.
>
>         Again, you're missing the point. My point is that files should
> *always* be whitespace-clean. whitespace.el is just a tool. I don't care
> about the tool.
>
>         OK, you made an illegitimate yet strong point. 

Making synchronization between v5-10 and the trunk as simple as
possible is illegitimate?

> I'm obviously not going to make the GNU Emacs guys change their way,
> and I don't want to make anybody's job harder, so I'll fix my
> setup. Congrats though. You've just ruined my day with that "Gnus is
> part of Emacs" bullshit. :-(

Well, if reminding you about facts upsets, I can't do much about it.
But I don't think to accuse me of writing bullshit is good style.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

>>         Now, this part really upsets me :-( [...]. Gnus is an
>> independant project, 
>
> If Gnus wasn't a part of Emacs, we would not have to require a
> copyright assignment for non-trivial contributions (you also signed
> it, so you should be aware of it).

        Of course. Although I can't remember exactly whether I signed
for a GNU software, or for GNU Emacs specifically. But in any case, you
can't deny that Gnus a somewhat "special" part of GNU Emacs for the
reasons I stated. I don't hack GNU Emacs[1], and AFAICT, most GNU Emacs
developpers don't hack Gnus. Yet, you explained that we should adhere to
their coding style.



>>> Beside yourself, nobody argued in favor of those "by-the-way
>>> whitespace changes".
>>
>>         So what ? When I think the majority is wrong, I try to convince
>> the majority. Wouldn't you ?
>
> Note that this was a reply to...
>>>> Note that I will accept whatever decision the majority adopts
> ... so I tried to point out that the majority (at least of those who
> participated in the previous discussions) doesn't agree.
>
> [ You may even replace Emacs developers with Gnus developers in the
>   paragraph above that upset you. ]

        That's not necessarily true BTW, I think Yamaoka San was not as
strongly opposed as you are to my point of view.

        But let me explain again: I was initially trying to convince the
Gnus committers. If I had failed, that would have been fine with me. But
then, you pointed out that it was not a matter of convincing the Gnus
Team, but the whole GNU Emacs team, and that, for the reason that we
should adhere to their coding style (which I consider illegitimate). 
That's what upset me. Only that.


> _Not introducing_ trailing whitespace is different to "cleanup"
> leading spaces to tabs.

        Hmmm. So we actually disagree on the kinds of whitespace cleanup
that should be authorized ? What about spaces followed by tabs ?


> If we'd agree that every Gnus developer should follows your proposal:
> How do you propose to ensure this?

        By providing 4 lines of code for their .emacs.


>>         OK, you made an illegitimate yet strong point. 
>
> Making synchronization between v5-10 and the trunk as simple as
> possible is illegitimate?

        I've clarified what I consider illegitimate a few paragraphs
above.


> But I don't think to accuse me of writing bullshit is good style.

        There was nothing personal in what I said. You stated a fact
that upset me. It is the *fact* that you stated which upset me, not the
fact that you *stated* it. Err, do you see what I mean ? :-)



Footnotes: 
[1]  Actually, I did once: I rewrote rect.el for both Emacsen and then
they didn't report back the changes they made to it afterwards :-/

-- 
Read the Jazz Blog !! http://jazzblog.didierverna.com

Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Miles Bader]

Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org> writes:
> AFAICT, most GNU Emacs developpers don't hack Gnus.

Many Emacs developers modify Gnus in the Emacs tree, and those changes
are regularly transferred to the Gnus tree.

> Yet, you explained that we should adhere to their coding style.

I don't think it's so much "should" as "has voluntarily decided to, to
better harmonize with Emacs development."

-Miles

-- 
Is it true that nothing can be known?  If so how do we know this?  -Woody Allen