Re: [PATCH] SubmittingPatches: Increase the line length limit from 80 to 100 colums

Pekka Enberg
2012-02-03T10:17:45Z

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
>> The kernel has *already* become a gruesome mess for 80 col
>> users long ago. That was the main reason why I stopped using
>> 80 col terminals two years ago ...
>>
>> So lets stop the pretense.
>
> in other words:
>
> --------------->
> [PATCH] SubmittingPatches: Increase the line length limit from 80 to 100 colums
>
> The overwhelming majority of kernel developers have stopped
> using 80 col terminals years ago.
>
> As far as I'm aware I was the last regular kernel contributor
> who still used a standard VGA text console, but both text
> consoles and using them to read the kernel source code has
> become increasingly gruesome years ago so I switched to a wider
> terminal two years ago.
>
> Worse than that, people are actively uglifying the kernel code
> to fit things into 80 cols mechanically. They are using
> checkpatch and are interpreting the 80 col warnings the wrong
> way again and again, sucking up reviewer bandwidth that could be
> utilized better.
>
> So lets increase the limit to 100 cols - this is a nice round
> limit, and it also happens to match with most developer xterm
> sizes. Code that goes over 100 cols for no good reasons will be
> arguably something worth fixing. (100 cols is also arguably
> closer to various brain limits such as vision of field and
> resolution restrictions, so we'll likely not have to increase
> this limit for a couple of million years, for all retro human
> genome users.)
>
> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

The rationale in the changelog is somewhat over the top but I agree
with the change :-)

Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>