Re: [PATCH] scripts/checkpatch.pl: Modify the line length limit of the code

[Peter Maydell]

On Fri, 6 Nov 2020 at 16:08, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
> Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> writes:
> > Personally I just don't think checkpatch should be nudging people
> > into folding 85-character lines, especially when there are
> > multiple very similar lines in a row and only one would get
> > folded, eg the prototypes in target/arm/helper.h -- some of
> > these just edge beyond 80 characters and I think wrapping them
> > is clearly worse for readability.
>
> The warning's intent is "are you sure this line is better not broken?"
> The problem is people treating it as an order that absolves them from
> using good judgement instead.
>
> I propose to fix it by phrasing the warning more clearly.  Instead of
>
>     WARNING: line over 80 characters
>
> we could say
>
>     WARNING: line over 80 characters
>     Please examine the line, and use your judgement to decide whether
>     it should be broken.

I would suggest that for a line over 80 characters and less than
85 characters, the answer is going to be "better not broken"
a pretty high percentage of the time; that is, the warning
has too many false positives, and we should tune it to have fewer.

And the lure of "produce no warnings" is a strong one, so
we should be at least cautious about what our tooling is
nudging us into doing.

thanks
-- PMM