Re: Clarifying confusion of our variable placement rules caused by cleanup.h

[Steven Rostedt]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:23:07 +0300
Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Such rules for headers are mostly harmless -- headers are supposed to be
> idempotent so ordering doesn't matter. But if ordering doesn't matter
> why have a rule at all?

As I mentioned, for aesthetic reasons only. If code is easy to look at,
it's easier to review. Especially for those with OCD ;-)

> 
> Duplicate header are trivially caught by tooling.
> 
> But such rules aren't useful either -- I've seen that Python IDEs hide
> import list by default (and probably manage it) because it is not "real"
> code.
> 
> Rules for initializers can be harmful because ordering affects code
> generation.

I agree. I still prefer the upside-down x-mas tree approach for
declaring variables, but obviously if they also get initialized, then
that trumps aesthetic reasoning.

-- Steve