Re: Code formatter

[Chris Snyder]

Graham Percival wrote:
> 1) running astyle will change lines of code.  This makes the
> history harder to look at... if we want to know who wrote a
> particular line (say, "there seems to be a bug here; hey Joe, why
> did you write "if (x = 3)" ?"), then it will appear that *you*
> were the last person to change that line of code.  Even if all you
> did was run astyle on it.

That seems to me to be unavoidable - or at least not worth the cost 
(investigating whitespace-aware diff tools, etc.) of avoiding it. Since 
the commit message would be "Automated formatting cleanup" we would just 
go to the previous commit in the tree (looking back on the Frogs list 
discussion, I see that you suggested exactly that).

> 2) many programmers view code style in a highly personal,
> quasi-religious manner.
...
> ...Han-Wen and Jan have different views...

If the standard isn't even completely defined then how could the job of 
code janitor be given to an inexperienced Frog? It seems to me that no 
one can solve this problem until an official LilyPond coding standard is 
fully set in stone. In the meantime, newbies are left wondering what 
code style they should adhere to (perhaps having to predict which dev 
will be looking at a particular patch).

> Any automatic tool will probably result in everybody having to
> give up at least one closely-held belief (whether it's the
> supremacy of tabs, or lining arguments up after an opening brace,
> or how a switch/case command looks, or whatever).  So when you
> propose a tool, we need to know what it will change.  And for all
> those changes, we need to be convinced that it's an ok change.

I'm going to "come out of the closet" here, in a manner - I'm primarily 
a Java programmer. I don't think I can count on both hands the number of 
personal formatting preferences (not to mention an intense dislike of 
C++ - but I'm not about to touch *that* dead horse) I've suspended in 
order to contribute. I'm not complaining about this - as a newcomer, 
it's my duty to adhere to established standards - but I'd like to know 
what the standards are.

> Sometimes, the automatic tool will just make existing
> badly-formatted code meet our own standards.  In other cases, it
> *will* change the standards.  Some of us won't care; others will
> care deeply.

I know I'm not in a position to credibly admonish those that have put 
countless hours into what's essentially a labor of love, but it seems to 
me that these personal holy wars often get in the way of real 
productivity (the amount of time you've expended responding to me, for 
instance). It looks to me that 99% of the coding style is agreed upon - 
is the 1% really worth all of this frustration?

How about a compromise for tabs vs. spaces: even lines use spaces, odd 
lines use tabs. I'm sure we could create an emacs rule for that.

(since you don't know me very well, let me assure you that the former 
paragraph was written with tongue firmly implanted in cheek)

Thanks, and sorry for taking up everyone's time.

-Chris