[xwiki-devs] [proposal] Change the maximum line width in the codestyle to 128 characters

[Sergiu Dumitriu]

Sergiu Dumitriu wrote:
> Hi devs,
> 
> Vincent said that he wanted to propose increasing the maximum line width 
> for a while, but didn't get to do it yet. And since I want the same 
> thing, I'm writing the proposal.
> 
> So, the idea is to increase the line width to 128 (or 120? I like 128 
> better), since:
> - nice code uses descriptive variable/method names, which tend to be 
> quite long, so many method calls span 2 or more lines
> - we're past the stage where developers have small displays that can 
> only display 80 (or 100) characters at a time
> - right now the eclipse settings are at 98 chars, which is quite a silly 
> number, and changing to only 100 is not worth the effort, so while we're 
> increasing it, we can use a larger value
> 
> Migration plan:
> - first, change the xwiki-verification-tools (next Tuesday)
> - we don't want to do a massive update, since it will probably create 
> conflicts with the local changes for each developer, and break existing 
> patches
> - whenever someone changes a file, he should first do a cleanup and 
> commit the file without code changes, then a second commit with the 
> actual behavior fix
> - never mix cosmetic changes with actual code affecting the behavior, as 
> it will be hard to review that change
> - the copyright notice doesn't need to be updated
> 
> 
> So, everybody agrees? Do we use 120 or 128?

Done (120 chars). All devs should update their codestyle settings.
-- 
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/