Re: [PATCH 3/4] agents: add coding style documentation and rules

Krzysztof Kozlowski
2025-07-30T09:31:40Z

On 28/07/2025 08:03, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 10:21:40PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 01:10:25AM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 07:40:36PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 03:58:01PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
>>>>> +**80 character line limit**
>>>>> + The preferred limit on the length of a single line is 80 columns.
>>>
>>> Hrm, it is?
>>>
>>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst#n104
>>> claims:
>>>
>>> The preferred limit on the length of a single line is 80 columns.
>>>
>>> Statements longer than 80 columns should be broken into sensible chunks,
>>> unless exceeding 80 columns significantly increases readability and does
>>> not hide information.
>>
>> That's true, it's not called out well enough. 80 is "preferred
>> limit" but not the hard limit, which is 100. See commit bdc48fa11e46
>> ("checkpatch/coding-style: deprecate 80-column warning")
>
> Sadly it doesn't look like I'm the only one who's confused here:
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/?q=%22checkpatch%2Fcoding-style%3A+deprecate+80-column+warning%22
>

I pop up there a lot, but there is no confusion. I am (and maybe we are
all?) well aware that checkpatch hard limit is 100 as explained also here:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/df2e466a-cdaa-4263-ae16-7bf56c0edf21@kernel.org/

But the coding style still says that preferred length limit is 80.
Checkpatch is not a coding style. Coding style document is describing
the coding style...

People trust checkpatch way too much, thus its hard limit was raised.
Some maintainers also agree with that, yet it does not invalidate what
coding style document says.

Best regards,
Krzysztof