[webkit-dev] Should we ever change style guidelines?

[Adam Treat]

On Wednesday 09 December 2009 06:33:20 pm Peter Kasting wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Adam Treat <treat at kde.org> wrote:
> > With every new rule to the style guide I fear we
> > lose the latter and become ever more pedantic about often trivial issues.
>
> I see no problem with pedantry.

Pedantry over trivial issues wastes time.

> A major problem: as you already noted, my common sense and yours disagree.
>  For example, the case indenting example you gave seems bad to me.  Style
> guides prevent us from arguing forever about things like this.  They
> streamline the review process, not lengthen it.

And that is only a problem when we are disagreeing about non-trivial issues.  
The indentation of case labels I believe is a relatively trivial issue.  And I 
would cite the already noted inconsistency of the current codebase as well as 
the documented disagreements on this list as evidence.

> I'd like to go back to thinking of the style guidelines as a *guide* for 
patch authors into the common coding style of the community.
>
> I very much hope not.  I have been on many bugs already where precisely
> this happened.  It was a fiasco.

I think you overstate.  It is also true that the current style guidelines if 
practiced pedantically in every case can lead to potential bugs.  Note: I am 
not suggesting this is reason to change them.  Corner cases should not make 
the guide.

> I don't see that at all.  What I see is us actually noticing style
> violations instead of having them slip under the radar.

Knowledge is good.  How you act on that knowledge is another matter.

Cheers,
Adam