Adding a section "Touching old code" to the Kdelibs Coding Style (was: Re: [PATCH] Set program icon name by KAboutData)

[Andreas Hartmetz]

2008/4/21, Michael Jansen <kde at michael-jansen.biz>:
>
>
> As a person with rather negative experiences with kdes ... style obsessed
> contributors ... i want to add one thing.
>
> If i would be more sensible i would have stopped contributing to this
> project
> because of some peoples obsession with whitespaces.
>
> Just a history.
>
>   - i got blamed for if( ccc ) it should be if (xxx)
>   - i got blamed for if (xxx) it has to be if( xxx ) - touched kdepim code
>   - I got educated that changing NULL to 0 is bad


:O

  - I was told that using NULL is against the coding style guide 2 days
> later
>   - I got blamed for code i didn't write nor touch
>
> Consider that when working on that code. The rules should be simple and
> easy
> to follow even for newcomers. If people of your experience have
> difficulties
> to agree what the rule is we have problems.
>
>
>
Dunno, if somebody asks you to do something silly but harmless you could
just do it and move on. Nobody will get harmed. It just happens *all the
time* in any open source project that project newcomers are told "thanks for
the patch but before we include it please change X, Y, and Z."
Only if different people say different things there is a real problem IMHO -
in that situation you should tell the people who tell you different things
to first check with each other.
BTW, there are two "big" coding styles that I know of: kdelibs style and
kdepim style. Other modules may be less uniform.

Yeah, the rules should be simple. But you can't argue with history.
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