From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752257AbeBAQDv (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 Feb 2018 11:03:51 -0500 Received: from ms.lwn.net ([45.79.88.28]:41654 "EHLO ms.lwn.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751582AbeBAQDt (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 Feb 2018 11:03:49 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2018 09:03:48 -0700 From: Jonathan Corbet To: "Brown, Nicholas" Cc: "joe@perches.com" , "apw@canonical.com" , "me@tobin.cc" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH] checkpatch: warn if changed lines exceeds a maximum size Message-ID: <20180201090348.61c9be3f@lwn.net> In-Reply-To: <1517499752.3668.10.camel@intl.att.com> References: <1517343904.3063.33.camel@intl.att.com> <20180130202655.22990-1-nick.brown@att.com> <1517481518.3063.92.camel@intl.att.com> <1517489679.7489.31.camel@perches.com> <1517499752.3668.10.camel@intl.att.com> Organization: LWN.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 1 Feb 2018 15:42:35 +0000 "Brown, Nicholas" wrote: > > I think the metric is too simplistic and > > not particularly useful. > > I'm not sure it's any more simplistic than than the character line > length limit, which is there to prompt thought on code nesting levels, > etc. And as it has to be explicitly configured it allows developers the > discretion to determine a code change size that meaningful in a given > situation. The line-length limit relates directly to code readability and non-infringement of a developer's sacred right to work unimpeded on an 80x24 xterm (the last vt100 died, unfortunately). A line-count limit lacks even that justification. The rule on splitting patches is entirely about logical changes that can be reviewed independently. Some of those changes involve a lot of lines, others do not. If the correct splits do not come to you when you're writing the changelogs for your patches (or before), a tool nagging about line counts really isn't going to help. I would expect it to miss most patches actually in need of splitting while complaining about many patches that are just fine. Thanks for working to improve the tools - they certainly can afford a lot of improvement! But my own suggestion would be to look a bit further for improvements that will be truly helpful to the development community. Thanks, jon