Re: [PATCH] printk: Remove no longer used second struct cont

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 5:57 PM, Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> In fact, I thought we already upped the check-patch limit to 100?
>
> Nope, CodingStyle neither.
>
> Last time I tried was awhile ago.

Ok, it must have been just talked about, and with the exceptions for
strings etc I may not have seen as many of the really annoying line
breaks lately.

I don't mind a 80-column "soft limit" per se: if some code
consistently goes over 80 columns, there really is something seriously
wrong there. So 80 columns may well be the right limit for that kind
of check (or even less).

But if we have just a couple of lines that are longer (in a file that
is 3k+ lines), I'd rather not break those.

I tend use "git grep" a lot, and it's much easier to see function
argument use if it's all on one line.

Of course, some function calls really are *so* long that they have to
be broken up, but that's where the "if it's a couple of lines that go
a bit over the 80 column limit..." exception basically comes in.

Put another way: long lines definitely aren't good. But breaking long
lines has some downsides too, so there should be a balance between the
two, rather than some black-and-white limit.

In fact, we've seldom had cases where black-and-white limits work well.

                     Linus