From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755269AbcH2RrQ convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:47:16 -0400 Received: from mga14.intel.com ([192.55.52.115]:4232 "EHLO mga14.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751195AbcH2RrO (ORCPT ); Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:47:14 -0400 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.30,597,1470726000"; d="scan'208";a="2365304" From: "Luck, Tony" To: Joe Perches , "Levin, Alexander" CC: Greg KH , Sasha Levin , "ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org" , LKML Subject: RE: [Ksummit-discuss] checkkpatch (in)sanity ? Thread-Topic: [Ksummit-discuss] checkkpatch (in)sanity ? Thread-Index: AdIA1otf155utbVhqEqD5yX56+c1+gAs/gaAACP9wrA= Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 17:46:50 +0000 Message-ID: <3908561D78D1C84285E8C5FCA982C28F3A1B3222@ORSMSX114.amr.corp.intel.com> References: <1472330452.26978.23.camel@perches.com> <20160828005636.GB19088@sasha-lappy> <1472348579.26978.47.camel@perches.com> <20160828023807.GC19088@sasha-lappy> <1472404557.26978.84.camel@perches.com> In-Reply-To: <1472404557.26978.84.camel@perches.com> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [10.22.254.139] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > 80 columns is simply silly when dealing with either > long identifiers or many levels of indentation. > > One thing that 80 column limit does do is encourage > shorter identifiers and fewer levels of indentation. > > Generally, both of those are good things. I think the main complaint with the limit is that people fix it by simply breaking the long line, which often makes for less readable code. Perhaps there would be less pushback on this if checkpatch also complained about clumsily broken long lines and offered the advice to restructure the code with helper functions etc. to avoid deep indentation? FWIW I do find checkpatch is helpful enough with useful tips that it has value even when it generates some noise. Generally the better you are at conforming to kernel style, the more irritating it will be, because you only see the questionable output. For newbies, and less frequent contributors (especially those who work on other projects with other style guides) it is likely still doing a good job. In the journey from 4.6 to 4.7 we had 13433 commits. 2258 (16%) from people with 5 or fewer commits in that release. Those are the people most helped by checkpatch (plus the maintainers who took those patches didn't have to spend as many cycles complaining about style). I think the bottom line is whether checkpatch's helpful messages do more good than the grey area messages that cause people to make questionable changes to shut checkpatch up. -Tony