Re: [PATCH] CodingStyle: Add information about trailing whitespace.

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:59:20 -0700
Josh Triplett <josht@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:

> +Do not leave trailing whitespace at the ends of lines.  Some editors with
> +"smart" indentation will insert whitespace at the beginning of new lines as
> +appropriate, so you can start typing the next line of code right away.
> +However, some such editors do not remove the whitespace if you end up not
> +putting a line of code there, such as if you leave a blank line.  As a result,
> +you end up with lines containing trailing whitespace.
> +
> +Git will warn you about patches that introduce trailing whitespace, and can
> +optionally strip the trailing whitespace for you; however, if applying a series
> +of patches, this may make later patches in the series fail by changing their
> +context lines.

quilt has ways of detecting and/or correcting newly-added trailing
whitespace, but I don't know the details.

One could share the various scriptlets which detect and fix trailing
whitespace but I think this issue is getting less and less important
now, because most maintainers will zap the new whitespace prior to
merging.

<checks>

akpm:/usr/src/25> grep -l "^+.*[        ]$" patches/git-*.patch
patches/git-acpi.patch
patches/git-alsa.patch
patches/git-battery.patch
patches/git-cifs.patch
patches/git-drm.patch
patches/git-gfs2-nmw.patch
patches/git-hid.patch
patches/git-ipwireless_cs.patch
patches/git-ixgbe.patch
patches/git-kgdb.patch
patches/git-leds.patch
patches/git-libata-all.patch
patches/git-md-accel.patch
patches/git-netdev-all.patch
patches/git-newsetup.patch
patches/git-nfs.patch
patches/git-ocfs2.patch
patches/git-pciseg.patch
patches/git-qla3xxx.patch
patches/git-selinux.patch
patches/git-sym2.patch
patches/git-unionfs.patch
patches/git-watchdog.patch
patches/git-wireless.patch

damn.  Bunch of lamers.

But there's less than there used to be.