Re: [PATCH v2] editorconfig: Add automatic editor configuration file

[Rasmus Villemoes]

On 03/07/2020 14.29, Jonathan Corbet wrote:

[doing a bit of necromancy here]

> On Fri,  3 Jul 2020 00:31:43 -0700
> Danny Lin <danny@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> EditorConfig is a standard for defining basic editor configuration in
>> projects. There is support available for 47 code editors as of writing,
>> including both built-in and extension support. Many notable projects
>> have adopted the standard already, including zsh, htop, and qemu.
>>
>> While this isn't a full-fledged C code style specifier, it does set some
>> basic ground rules that make it more convenient for contributors to use
>> any editor of their choice and not have to worry about indentation, line
>> endings, encoding, final newlines, etc. This should make it
>> significantly easier to conform to the kernel's general code style when
>> used in combination with clang-format.
>>
>> For more information, check the official EditorConfig website:
>> https://editorconfig.org/
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Danny Lin <danny@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> ---
> 
> So I worry a bit that not everybody will welcome the addition of a dotfile
> that may be magically interpreted by their editor.

I would suppose that one would have to enable editorconfig support
explicitly in one's editor, so this would have no effect for people that
haven't done so (though there are almost certainly exceptions).

> I also worry that the
> file itself could become a battleground for people wanting to argue about
> style issues.

I don't think so, not any more than the coding-style document is, and
that seems to be pretty solid (but as doc maintainer, you'd know better).

> 
> Perhaps I worry a bit too much...?

As someone who regularly needs to submit patches to random upstream
projects to fix bugs or implement minor features, I for one would really
welcome more widespread use of editorconfig. While I mostly work with
the linux kernel (and other projects using the same C style), so my
default C style setting is "linux", even for the kernel this would be
helpful to me when I poke around in none-C files (shell scripts, for
example).

Rasmus