[gentoo-dev] Tabs and spaces

[Aron Griffis]

Hello,

There is apparently a difference of opinion among Gentoo developers
concerning the use of tabs and spaces.  I realize this is a topic as
dear to the hearts of developers as Gnome vs. KDE, and Vim vs. Emacs.
So I approach it with some trepidation.  Nevertheless, I've been
frustrated by the current practice, so I'm going to propose my opinion
and hope that this thread won't persist long on gentoo-dev.

The current practice appears to be to set tab stops at 4 characters.
The alternative I suggest is to leave tab stops at 8 characters, but use
4-character indentation (or allow developers to choose their own
preferred indentation).

Here are my reasons:

1. 8 characters is the default tab stop for ALL mono-spaced
   applications.  That includes all editors, viewers, and printing
   programs.  To use a different tab width requires reconfiguration of
   every program.

   Note: You can't reconfigure "cat". And no, I don't want to alias cat
   to "expand -t 4".

2. Modern editors supply users with the ability to use an indentation
   that differs from the current tabstop setting, in case you want to
   use something other than 8 characters.  For example, Vi has the
   "shiftwidth" setting.  Vim offers the "smarttab" setting, which makes
   things even more comfortable.

   I am certain that Emacs offers similar settings, though as a Vi(m)
   user, I can't cite them.

3. If you use this method, then your ebuilds/code will always look
   right, regardless of what method you use to view them.  You can edit
   an ebuild by any developer, and you don't have to wonder... "Did they
   use spaces instead of tabs?  Did they mix them?  What was their
   intended tabstop (which can drastically affect the appearance of text
   tables)?"  Instead, it JUST WORKS.

I'm not trying to settle on an indentation scheme here.  Sure, that
might provide even more comfort and consistency in the ebuilds, but it
infringes on the developer's personal preferences more than I would
wish.  I simply would like tab characters to be the standard 8 so that
editing/viewing/printing programs can work without needing to tweak each
one.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Aron