Tabs in Source Files [C, H]

[Sebastian Huber]

----- Am 7. Aug 2019 um 16:24 schrieb joel joel at rtems.org:

> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 8:59 AM Sebastian Huber <
> sebastian.huber at embedded-brains.de> wrote:
> 
>> ----- Am 7. Aug 2019 um 15:41 schrieb joel joel at rtems.org:
>>
>> > Hi
>> >
>> > While looking at assembly language formatting, I decided to grep for tabs
>> > in source
>> > files. In cpukit and testsuites, there are a LOT of files with tabs.
>> >
>> > $ find cpukit testsuites/ -name "*.[ch]" | xargs -e grep -rlP "\t" | grep
>> > -v libnetworking | grep -v pppd | grep -v contrib | wc -l
>> > 530
>> >
>> > That may be picking up a few extra files but that's still a lot of files.
>> >
>> > Any comments?
>>
>> My approach to white space in source files would be to pick up the best
>> source code formatter available, select a configuration which fits best to
>> the existing style, run it over the code (excluding code which we want to
>> keep in synchronization with an upstream) and later run every commit
>> through it.
>>
> 
> I'm not disagreeing with you but no one has ever found a formatter and
> defined a style that matches.

Yes, we invested some time to evaluate clang-format early this year and failed to produce useful results. They even rejected to accept potential contributions to support this style because it seemed to be to exotic. I don't have a problems with the RTEMS style. But I think in the long run a style supported by a good formatter which is ubiquitously used (e.g. Linux, BSD, Google, GNU) would be beneficial. If you use an ubiquitous style, you make it easier for new contributors.