[gentoo-dev] Re: All Developers!

[Andreas Voegele <voegelas@users.sourceforge.net>]

Mikael Hallendal writes:

> Hmm .. imho it's much easier to read with the \ aligned.

I disagree.  I don't like aligned / (or, for example, aligned
variables in C programs) very much.  If you insert a new line that is
longer than the existing lines you might have to reformat the other
lines too.  If you commit your changes to the CVS and look at the
changes with "cvs diff" not only the newly inserted line but also all
the reformatted lines are displayed which is really annoying.

For example, if you have these lines:

./configure --host=${CHOST}          \
            --prefix=/usr            \
            --mandir=/usr/share/man

Now you add two new, very long options:

./configure --host=${CHOST}                             \
            --prefix=/usr                               \
            --mandir=/usr/share/man                     \
            --with-openssl-include=/usr/include/openssl \
            --with-openssl-libraries=/usr/lib/openssl

Because of the alignment more lines than really necessary have to be
changed, which clutters the output of "cvs diff".

> I think we can do this by supplying a emacs/vi-mode for editing
> ebuilds.  Those modes should be strict and force the developer to do
> it right.

Hm, it's easier to base the ebuild mode on Emacsen's sh-mode than to
write a new mode from scratch.  But sh-mode doesn't allow tabs at the
end of lines; and I don't know if it is possible to change the mode's
behaviour easily.

After looking at Emacsen's sh-mode, I think that the following style,
that uses tabs at the beginning of lines and neither tabs nor spaces
at the end of lines, would be the easiest style to implement:

./configure --host=${CHOST} \
    --prefix=/usr \
    --mandir=/usr/share/man