Re: [Qemu-devel] Patch removing spaces

[Ian Jackson]

Balazs Attila-Mihaly \(Cd-MaN\) writes ("Re: [Qemu-devel] Patch removing 
spaces"):
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not pushing for inclusion or anything like
> that, I just thought that this was a convention in the source and
> wanted to help out preserving it.

_Preserving_ the convention is fine.  I agree that patches which
introduce trailing whitespace (or carriage returns!) should not be
commited.

But going through and changing the existing code is a very bad idea.
The benefits are trivial and the costs (extra conflicts, spurious
output from `vcs blame', spurious diffs reported, and so on) are
substantial.

Changing the existing code would be a bad idea even if it was to
improve a layout style which everyone agreed was horrid and confusing
to work with.  It is infinitely more of a bad idea when the problem,
and thus the fix, is actually invisible and so practically worthless.

Ian.