Re: [PATCH 3/5] checkpatch: add a blacklist

[Daniel Walker <dwalker@fifo99.com>]

On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 16:52 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:41:08 -0700
> Daniel Walker <dwalker@fifo99.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 16:11 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > > Right it's a tool .. However, you should use it and you should follow
> > > > it. If for some reason you disagree with the tool you have to give at
> > > > least an arguable reason why, not just "It's a guide", "I don't like the
> > > > coding style." etc..
> > > 
> > > Those are perfectly good reasons.
> > 
> > I don't think they are.. Like adding spaces for tabs is ok cause
> > checkpatch is a guide right?
> 
> Yes.. if it was such a big deal someone would have updated the git commit
> tools to fix them as we do to strim off trailing spaces.
> 
> They have *zero* impact on performance, maintainability or readability
> providing they don't mess up the indentation - and the kernel is full of
> them.

It has an impact on maintainability and readability.. Take a source file
with tabs, then remove all the tabs and insert spaces. It's pretty
annoying and I would not want to touch code like that. Trailing
whitespace is a lot less annoying than using spaces instead of tabs.

Daniel