[sakai-core-team] whitespace changes

[Matthew Jones]

I agree that it's a history killer which is one big reason why it's
avoided. The other is that we don't have a coding standard of tabs verses
spaces, and if spaces how many spaces. We could change every file in the
code, implement a hook to enforce it when people try to commit something
that didn't match but.

1) Is it worth it to lose that blame history?
2) Can we agree on a standard to use (
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e)
- 129 votes for spaces, 250 votes for tabs just on the top, even more
disagreement going down.

I don't think even if we could live with #1 that in a large community
project like Sakai #2 would be possible, but maybe I'm wrong. What would I
vote? I have expandtab set so I guess I'd be on the side of spaces.
Personally when I edit, I just keep to the format of whatever code is
there. (I show hidden characters in my editors) If someone commits
something and the spacing is different it doesn't bother me.

I like this reply on that post. ;)

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/165
​

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Sam Ottenhoff <ottenhoff at longsight.com>
wrote:

> Ideally, this would have been done during the move from SVN to Git and
> before lots of people forked sakaiproject/sakai.git.  We should have
> globally modified all Java code as described in the link below, and then we
> should have set up a plan to enforce standards via pull request validation.
>
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4112410/git-change-styling-whitespace-without-changing-ownership-blame
>
> The problem with formatting changes is that it's a history killer.  git
> blame and git diff lose their relevancy.
>
> How upsetting would it be for all of the Git forks if we rewrote the
> entire history as described in that StackOverflow post?
>
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Brian Jones <bjones86 at uwo.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hi Core Team,
>>
>> What is the best/accepted process for correcting whitespace
>> inconsistencies in file(s) now that we've moved to Github?
>>
>> For example, if I'm working through something, and I notice a file has
>> mixed tabs vs spaces; it's annoying me and I'd like to just fix it.
>>
>> Should I make a PR purely for the whitespace change to keep it separate
>> from the feature I'm working on? Do I need to link it to a new Jira that
>> is only for the whitespace changes?
>>
>> Thanks for your input!
>> --
>> Brian Jones
>> Programmer/Analyst
>> Information Technology Services
>> Support Services Building, Suite 4300
>> Western University
>> (519) 661-2111 x86969
>> bjones86 at uwo.ca
>> _______________________________________________
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>> sakai-core-team at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-core-team
>>
>
>
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