[Xen-devel] [xen 4.6 retrospective] [bad] Code style checking takes up too much time

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Another one from the developer meeting

= Issue / Observation =
Code style checking takes up too much time. This affects both reviewers who 
spend a significant amount commenting on style issues and also makes it harder 
to for contributors to focus on non-style issues. What I mean by the latter is 
that the volume of comments that need to be tracked by contributors, makes it 
harder for them.

= Possible Solution / Improvement =
Automate code-style checks through a tool, that could be run as a pre-patch 
review tool. Once we have that, update contribution docs.

As far as I recall, Andy Cooper believes that dealing with the 2 different 
coding styles should not be a huge issue. A good tool could differentiate by 
directory / file.

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
* If not, how we deal with check failures in areas of a file that have not been 
touched by the contributor
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel