Re: [PATCH 1/19] MUTEX: Introduce simple mutex implementation

Ingo Molnar
2005-12-13T10:28:11Z

* Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:11:41AM -0500, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 09:04:29AM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Remove -Wdeclaration-after-statement
> > > >
> > > > Now that gcc 2.95 is not supported anymore it's ok to use C99
> > > > style mixed declarations everywhere.
> > >
> > > Nack. This code style is pure obsfucation and we should disallow it forever.
> >
> > Why? It greatly increases readability when variable declarations can be
> > moved close to their actual uses. glibc changed a lot of its codebase
> > this way and from my experience it really helps.
>
> mentioning glibc and readability in the same sentence disqualies your
> here, sorry ;-)

it's a different coding style, but otherwise i find glibc highly
readable and well-maintained. It is also a more mature piece of code
than say the kernel, e.g. API-wise, so we could indeed learn a few
things. Just consider the fact that glibc has 10 times more APIs than
the kernel, and still it is breaking apps less often than the kernel.
But i digress :-)

Ingo