Re: Mixing whitespace and topical changes

[Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org>]

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