Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: William McArthur <sandymac@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild indentation (tabs vs. spaces) fascism ;^)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 17:40:10
Message-Id: 3CCB28C6.7050409@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild indentation (tabs vs. spaces) fascism ;^) by Arcady Genkin
1 Arcady Genkin wrote:
2 > Two questions:
3 >
4 > 1. What makes tabbed indentation in ebuilds so much better than
5 > indentation with spaces? I know *plenty* of reasons *against* using
6 > tab characters, but I must be missing something obvious, because I
7 > know no reasons in favor of tabs.
8
9 I have no preference of one over the other but I prefer one over both.
10
11 > 2. Even if it turns out tabs are somehow better than spaces, why do
12 > we want to be so fascist[1][2] about it? Why don't we let the ebuild
13 > maintainer to decide which approach suits his philosophy, editor and
14 > habits? We can still require that all indents are 4 spaces wide; I'm
15 > only talking about tabs/spaces issue.
16
17 Because any large project must maintain a level of consistencey. While
18 tab vs spaces is a minor issue it is part of a larger whole and as such
19 is important. My mother used to pound in to me: "Mind your pennies and
20 your dollars will take care of themselves." I don't know who she was
21 quoting but the same logic applies here.
22
23 Where there isn't any place I know of the specificly spells out the
24 tab/space usage in an ebuild if you look at /usr/portage/skel.ebuild you
25 will see that tabs are uses.
26
27 > Footnotes:
28 > [1] Talking about bulk force-tabbifying ebuilds.
29 > [2] Please note the smiley in the subject line before you stone me
30 > for my choice of words.
31
32 Sandy McArthur