Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 2/4] CODING_STYLE, checkpatch: update line length rules

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

On 07/09/2015 17:23, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> > Apart from copy-n-pasting, there is also the problem that you can run
> > "checkpatch.pl -f" on a whole file ... it would also be ugly to suddenly
> > have (much) more warnings here.
> 
> Feature.  If you run checkpatch on a whole file, you obviously do it to
> find its ugly spots.  Lines longer than 76 characters qualify.

Based on the statistics, half of QEMU's files has at least one 76-79
character line.  The noise from checkpatch.pl -f is actually a worse
thing than the cut-and-paste, but that's something that can be fixed in
other ways (e.g. different strictness for checkpatch.pl vs.
checkpatch.pl -f).

That said, and even though Thomas obviously hasn't read the previous
discussion, :) I do believe that 76 characters is too strict a limit.

76 would be great (two levels of email quoting are what you get 99% of
the time), and 78 would be nice, but I believe 79 provides the biggest
bang for the buck.

Paolo