[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Documentation, Usability and Development

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 12:28:20PM -0800, Kevin Brown wrote:
> Petrus Viljoen <viljoenp@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Kevin Brown wrote:
> > 
> > > things, after all, so we should use them, yes?).  Most people are
> > > perfectly willing to adhere to rules such as the one about formatting,
> > > but the more such rules you insist upon, the more quickly they'll
> > > decide to work on some other project that isn't so anal.
> > >
> > 
> > Don't agree with you .
> > 
> > If you don't lay down the rules (Personality of this project) you will get a
> > mishmash of coding styles naming conventions etc.. Making it more difficult 
> > to
> > to understand the source and structure  of the project.
> 
> I agree regarding naming conventions and other such things that
> require manual control.  But I was referring to actual formatting of
> the code, and I've seen far too many criticisms of subtle formatting
> changes here on the list to believe that it isn't important to some of
> the key players here.
> 
> And yet, formatting of the code is something that can be dealt with
> automatically by the CVS maintainers.  The only initial work involves
> marking the sections of the code that indent should leave alone (most
> of those sections will be comments).
> 
> > Personally I think the source  in FreeCiv is in a very good shape. Easy to
> > understand & read.
> > And this is because of strict adherence to some simple rules.
> 
> I agree to some extent.  Remember the tradeoff, though: fewer
> contributors.  How many people would contribute but don't because
> they're put off by the strict rules regarding the source code?
> Shouldn't maintenance of the appearance of the code be left to those
> who actually care about it?  There's nothing wrong with someone
> submitting a patch, getting it approved for inclusion in CVS, and then
> someone else who cares about the formatting fixing the patch so that
> it adheres to the conventions.

No. See the AI for the reason. See how many time the people now spend
deciphering it. You have to ask/force the patch author for
comments/good high level style (not white spaces but capabilities).

        Raimar

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