Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] CODING_STYLE: Define our preferred form for multiline comments

[Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>]

On Mon,  4 Jun 2018 17:21:40 +0100
Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:

> The codebase has a bit of a mix of
>  /* multiline comments
>   * like this
>   */
> and
>  /* multiline comments like this
>     in the GNU Coding Standards style */
> 
> State a preference for the former.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
> ---
> I admit that to some extent I'm imposing my aesthetic
> preferences here; pretty sure we have a lot more style
> 1 comments than style 2, though.
> ---
>  CODING_STYLE | 13 +++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/CODING_STYLE b/CODING_STYLE
> index 12ba58ee293..fb1d1f1cd62 100644
> --- a/CODING_STYLE
> +++ b/CODING_STYLE
> @@ -124,6 +124,19 @@ We use traditional C-style /* */ comments and avoid // comments.
>  Rationale: The // form is valid in C99, so this is purely a matter of
>  consistency of style. The checkpatch script will warn you about this.
>  
> +Multiline comments blocks should have a row of stars on the left
> +and the terminating */ on its own line:
> +    /* like
> +     * this
> +     */
> +Putting the initial /* on its own line is accepted, but not required.

Could we say "at maintainer discretion", or is that always implied?  The
asymmetry of the proposed standard is not my favorite and a mostly
blank line before and after further supports standing out from
surrounding code.  Note that the kernel coding style, except for
certain exceptions, is:

/*
 * This is a
 * multi-line
 * comment
 */

Thanks,

Alex

> +(Some of the existing comments in the codebase use the GNU Coding
> +Standards form which does not have stars on the left; avoid this
> +when writing new comments.)
> +
> +Rationale: Consistency, and ease of visually picking out a multiline
> +comment from the surrounding code.
> +
>  8. trace-events style
>  
>  8.1 0x prefix