[webkit-dev] Proposing style guide change regarding braces on conditional arms

[Dirk Pranke]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Adam Treat <treat at kde.org> wrote:
> I don't think we should be changing the style guide for anything besides
> clarifications of currently unwritten rules.  No matter how the fashion may
> change or how developers may change.  Changing the rules throws consistency
> out the window which is, I believe, the greatest benefit of having a style
> guide.
>

While I agree with your points re: subjectivity, and I agree that any
two competent programmers can disagree on any
points, it is also true that some practices can be shown to be more
reliable, maintainable, or readable, and those
practices do change over time, partially as technology changes and
partially because this is a social process.

Hence I believe that if there was a significant consensus that rules
should be changed, that is okay, even if there is
no semantic difference in the rule change.

I agree that having style guidelines that are not followed *in the
existing codebase* are pretty much useless,
even if they're used for new code. But, changing the rules only throws
consistency out the window if the code is not
updated to conform with the rule, so an alternative to an
inconsistently-formatted codebase (and a useless style guide)
or style-guide stais is to require "whitespace-only" CLs to update the
codebase (and yes, I know some people object
to such things).

Accordingly, I believe that whitespace CLs are an acceptable cost to
impose as a part of this, and people
proposing the change should be willing to pay the cost. Of course, I
think we should attempt to determine
the cost before deciding to make the change.

Dunno if this changes any of your thinking or not ...

Peter, were you thinking that you (or at least someone) would attempt
to bring the code into compliance with the
new rule?

-- Dirk