svn commit: r250431 - head/usr.bin/xargs

[smckay at internode.on.net]

On Fri 10/05/13 17:50 , Juli Mallett jmallett at FreeBSD.org sent: 
> Eitan, 
>  
> Are other changes coming to xargs for which these style changes make 
> sense?  If not, I'd say that style changes which only adjust vertical 
> whitespace, especially those which mostly add vertical whitespace at 
> the start of functions with no local variables (which is one of the 
> most archaic and unusual things style(9) requires), are probably the 
> most gratuitous and silly style changes to make.  That doesn't even 
> rise to being a style change, it's just a whitespace change.  And I 
> really do believe that vertical whitespace changes are much, much 
> sillier than horizontal whitespace changes. 
 
Juli, it seems we're bothered by the same thing here: that at least 
some of the vertical white space requirements of style(9) are 
silly and (rightly) widely ignored.  So I think we should change 
the guide to fix this rather than damaging a lot of perfectly 
readable code. 
 
I'd like to emphasise that I'm not even slightly cranky at Eitan for 
his commit since we committers are presumed to have agreed to follow 
style(9) and he's just changing code to match the official style.  My 
complaint is that the official style isn't useful in this small regard 
and should be changed. 
 
> (Watch for standalone commits from people who used to be 
> very active developers who have recently hit the threshold for getting 
> commit bit reaper E-Mails.  They're fairly instructive in the art of 
> making occasional insignificant changes for the sake of making 
> changes.) 
 
Well, I used to be a low activity developer and have transitioned to 
being a very low activity developer, so I know the reaper and the 
temptation of a quick fix to get it off your back.  However it's better 
to let the reaper pester you than to make a low quality commit.  After 
all, if you haven't anything new and interesting to add, there is always 
that convenient list of bugs that could be fixed... 
 
Cheers, 
 
Stephen.