Re: [xen 4.6 retrospective] [bad] Code style checking takes up too much time

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>]

On 31/08/15 08:27, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 28.08.15 at 17:39, <lars.kurth.xen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What may be a bigger issue, is that older code may not fully adhere to 
>> coding standards. The open question is then
>> * Whether such a tool should only run on the diff/patch
> Isn't that the intended / expected behavior of such a tool anyway?

I would have thought so, and moreso only on the newly added lines.

> If so, the real problem here is how the tool should determine the
> style of a file being modified when that file's style isn't reasonably
> clean.

As we tag most files with an emacs magic block, it would be fine to have
an extra tag used by an automatic tool.

It might also be an idea for someone who uses vim to provide a vim magic
block which we also use.  That might help to reduce the effort required
by contributors to get it right first time.

>
>> * If not, how we deal with check failures in areas of a file that have not 
>> been touched by the contributor
> Manual inspection, using common sense to decide whether to ignore
> the tools complaint?

Ideally we would engineer such a tool to have as few false results as
possible, but there are some cases where it might be preferable (e.g.
changing the indentation of a large block) to keep the old style to aid
the clarity of the current patch.  This will need to be decided on a
case-by-case basis.

~Andrew