[U-Boot-Users] Enforcement of coding standards my $0.02 worth

Rod Boyce rod_boyce at stratexnet.com
Thu Mar 6 20:30:16 CET 2003 

All,

After having read a lot of this thread.  I'm going to add my $0.02 worth
to this discussion.  'ident' is your friend it can convert the source
very easily to any format you would like.  I sometime agree Wolfgang can
be a but picky but without a doubt I believe that Wolfgang is doing a
great job of keeping a now very multi-platform boot loader that has to
deal with many different CPU's and sometime conflicting hardware
requirements a cohesive unity that is easy to port to different
platforms. I agree with Wolfgang we all are standing on the shoulders of
those who have gone before us. 

IMHO the code is untidy in quite a few places.  I have noticed Wolfgang
has reformatted patches I have sent him but who cares.  I say Wolfgang
is doing a fantastic job and to keep up the good work.  I myself and
many others on this list owe Wolfgang a beer or two if I ever get to
meet you in person.

Regards,
Rod Boyce.

PS I have disagreed with Wolfgang in the past but I still believe that
U-Boot is a better product because Wolfgang is the lead and the
maintainer a thankless job on many ocasions.

On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 16:16:30 -0000
Chris Elston <elston at radstone.co.uk> wrote:

> I don't really want to get into the politics of when patches should be
> accepted/rejected, but I do agree that we need to have an honest (and
> friendly!) discussion of the #ifdef mess and coding standard enforcement
> issues.
> 
> Both Robert and Wolfgang have fair points.  From Robert's point of view why
> be picky about formatting when the rest of the source isn't as neat as it
> could be.  And from Wolfgang's point of view, why add more messy code - that
> will just make things worse.
> 
> Maybe we could have a blitz on everything where we just check and fix
> adherence to the coding standards - no functionality changes, just
> readability.  Once we have the codebase in a 'tidied' state then Wolfgang
> can more justifiably reject patches if they don't meet the standards.  
> 
> I think we can all agree that in places the source is a little untidy, and
> that we wish to aim towards as readable and clear tree as we can - so let's
> pull together and sort it out!
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Chris.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert Schwebel [mailto:r.schwebel at pengutronix.de]
> > Sent: 06 March 2003 16:08
> > To: U-Boot Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] [PATCH] 2/9: bootp
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 04:31:10PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > > Robert, what do you want to demonstrate?
> > > 
> > > That U-Boot was not written by one single person, stickng 
> > to  exactly
> > > one  coding  style?  That  there  are  deficiencies,  both 
> > formal and
> > > functional?
> > > 
> > > What you do right now is not helpful. You have enough  
> > experience  to
> > > provide  really  valuable  input - see some of your 
> > previous patches.
> > > Please try to focus on substantial things, and concentrate  
> > on  fixes
> > > and extensions.
> > 
> > You want open words, ok, here we go. 
> > 
> > Don't get me wrong, I generally have no problem with maintainers
> > rejecting my patches.  It's quite normal that maintainers know their
> > projects much better than I do, so I'm used to going back to 
> > the lab and
> > reworking stuff when it's necessary. 
> > 
> > My problem is that your argumentation regarding the "little things" is
> > not easily understandable. You have a document in your code which says
> > that Linux coding style should be used. If I send patches which fix
> > coding style (and yes, it's only in source files I have worked on,
> > otherwhise I wouldn't have found it) they are rejected. You 
> > say: improve
> > documentation; if I find something and do it you reject it 
> > because it is
> > not _exactly_ how you would have done it or how you did it. I try to
> > improve usability by making help messages more understandable, because
> > I, when I first tried to _use_ them didn't understand them and had to
> > look at the source first (every good engineer should know how 
> > important
> > the grandma test is ;). You reject them because I add 10 
> > bytes to a 100
> > KiB bootloader. I try to improve #ifdef mess (and there's a lot of it
> > left, I can tell you!) by using all the well known techniques 
> > like debug
> > macros etc. You reject them because it doesn't change functionality. I
> > try to make code better readable by unsing correct indentation - you
> > reject it. Then, after all that 'it-doesn't-matter-how-the-code-looks-
> > like-if-it-works' I add two lines with
> > 
> > //#define foo
> > #undef foo
> >  
> > and you tell me that it's against the coding style. My impression is
> > that you didn't care a single bit about coding style with the other 
> > 3.2 MiB of the code, so why do you care about my little improvements?
> > It's not that easy to understand.  
> > 
> > Wolfgang, all these puzzle pieces are not worth to be 
> > mentioned when you
> > see them separately, and I definitely have better things to do than
> > starting flame wars. But all that stuff together - including your
> > sometimes a little bit rude RTFM postings addressed to people who are
> > _not_ as deep into the project as you are - definitely don't 
> > improve the
> > mood of the developers here. 
> > 
> > Enough said - I would love to see an open discussion about how to
> > improve the coding style / #ifdef problems. 
> > 
> > Robert 
> > -- 
> >  Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de
> >  Pengutronix - Linux Solutions for Science and Industry
> >    Braunschweiger Str. 79,  31134 Hildesheim, Germany
> >    Handelsregister:  Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686
> >     Phone: +49-5121-28619-0 |  Fax: +49-5121-28619-4
> > 
> > 
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