Whitespace and other stylistic changes

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Maarten Bosmans <mkbosmans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So my question is: how far away from a functional change is it
> desired/allowed to make stylistic changes for consistency? Is that the
> whole file, class, function, scope block, statement or line?

my two cents:

1/ it is ok to do such adjustment for line that would have been
modified otherwise (with the caveat about the 'local style')

2/ it is not ok when the signal/noise ration become annoying low, but
of course the exact level of annoyance is reviewer sensitive. it is an
absolute no go when some files in a (functional) patch have only
whitespace changes

3/ in doubt, split the whitespace changes in a separate commit.
personally I would not consider if (a) vs if ( a ) vs if(a) a
justifiable noise in and of itself. but your miles may vary

one day maybe we will have an agreed upon canonical style (not holding
my breath) at which point we probably will have automated tools to do
the initial clean-up and commit hook to enforce it.


Norbert