Re: Source formatting issues while maintaining code

You should compare two frequencies:

1. How often do you read the code?

2. How often do you need to know who changed a specific line?  
(Reformatting everything will be a discontinuity in this info.)

It's likely that F_1 >> F_2, so I would tend toward reformatting  
everything to a single standard.


On Nov 23, 2008, at 10:06 AM, Tushar Joshi wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Let me add some more points here:
>
> >>meaningful "blame" information,
> Exactly this is the main reason we want to maintain the code  
> formatting
>
> >> that has a setting to ignore whitespace-only changes.
> I have tried using the Eclipse Compare/Patch setting of ignore white  
> spaces but when it encounters a auto formatted file it shows  
> numerous changes and the ignore whitespace setting doesn't seem to  
> work in that case.
>
> But Eclipse compare option is so easy that it will always be my  
> first preference to use rather than a external CVS diff tool which  
> is intelligent, and even I don't know of such a tool
>
> Tushar Joshi
> http://www.tusharvjoshi.com
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 10:31 AM, Charles Miller  
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 23/11/2008, at 10:12 AM, Tushar Joshi wrote:
>
> > Have any one implemented any creative method to solve this problem?
>
> If it's important to you, you could just bite the bullet, run the
> entire source tree through an auto-formatter with the same settings as
> your IDE, then re-check it in. You'll make it a lot harder to get
> meaningful "blame" information, but at least the code will be
> consistently formatted from then on.
>
> Alternatively, you could get a better diff program, preferably one
> that has a setting to ignore whitespace-only changes.
>
> C
>
> 

Michael T. Nygard
[email protected]
http://www.michaelnygard.com/

Author of "Release It!"
http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/mnee/index.html