[webkit-dev] style-queue entering beta

[Chris Jerdonek]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Chris Jerdonek
> <chris.jerdonek at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009,  Adam Barth wrote:
>>> Hopefully, the script will improve over time, but it will
>>> never be perfect.
>>
>> Can you elaborate on this?  For example, are you saying there is a
>> basic reason that the script will always have bugs?  Without knowing
>> too much about the script, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to at
>> least make the false negatives go away.  Or are you simply saying that
>> the guidelines and script will never fully capture what we mean by
>> "correct style"?
>
> Does this mean you're volunteering to remove all the false positives
> and false negatives?  :)

I was hoping to work on the script eventually, which is partly why I
asked for elaboration.

All that I meant above is that one could potentially disable (for the
bot) the style tests that report false violations, or else reduce
their confidence score.  That way, if the style bot flags a patch, it
is guaranteed to be meaningful without looking at the details of the
report.  This can only be done, though, if the problems with the
script are not so basic that they affect most or many of the tests.

(The reverse is not as straightforward, though.  It does not seem as
easy to change the script -- in a useful way -- so that if it reports
that a patch has met the guidelines, then the patch really meets the
guidelines.)

> One basic reason the script isn't perfect is that it's doesn't have a
> full C++ / Objective-C++ parser.

If we could go this route, would we prefer it?

--Chris