Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] [GREP] GNU Radio Coding Guidelines

[Andrej Rode]

Hi, 

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 23:03:40 -0800
Ron Economos <address@hidden> wrote:

> I realize that I'm late to the game, but I was recently reminded of
> this GREP (and it's associated GREP 0011). I'm all for cleaning the
> code, but the current .clang-format rules create a problem (that's
> addressed in GREP 0011).

Yeah, a bit late, but with valid arguments nonetheless. 
> 
> Specifically, the current .clang-format would change the files so
> much, that the repository history would become useless. In GREP 0011,
> this is referred to as a "history reset".

Reformatting everything in one commit will make it easy to jump this
single commit if going back in git blame or in git log. Still all
functional (relevant) changes are visible to the observer. 
Mitigating "large" code changes by crafting a .clang-format comapatible
to the old, non-enforced, coding guideline will result in "medium" code
changes.

At that point it's not really clear if one would have a benefit of
changing only half of the code (since it's very likely to be the
"important" half). And thus the .clang-format was crafted to have the
most pleasant coding experience. 

Also while editing old files the formatting was all over the place in
relevant places (where the functional code lives). Usually header &
footer is formatted uniformly.
> 
> I'd like to suggest a middle ground. A .clang-format can easily be 
> crafted that uses the old GNU Radio guidelines. This would provide 
> minimal changes to the files, and a "history reset" would be avoided
> (or at least mitigated).

Personally I'm not really keen to touch the formatting again, but I'd
like to hear other opinions. But to be honest, I don't really care, as
long as the formatting is enforced automatically. Otherwise formatting
is futile.

Thanks for chiming in!

Cheers
Andrej