Re: [PATCH 2/2] checkpatch: Add ability to insert and delete lines to patch/file

[Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>]

On Tue, 2014-07-08 at 13:24 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue,  8 Jul 2014 10:53:36 -0700 Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
> 
> > This can be valuable to insert or delete blank lines as well
> > as fix misplaced brace or else uses.
> 
> hm, do we really want to go down this path?

Maybe, maybe not.

I've seen a lot of patches that people seem to spend
time producing (frequently incorrectly done too) that
could be better automated.

> It's a very long one and it leads to /usr/bin/indent?

For now, I think it's a pretty minimal bit of code.

I think most of the formatting suggestions emitted by
checkpatch are maybe a bit more sensible than indent.

indent makes crappy decisions about line length and
argument wrapping, comment location, and other things.

checkpatch doesn't (and I won't make it) even try.

checkpatch's --fix option hasn't been taken up very
widely.  (not yet?, not ever?  dunno)

I've suggested Lindent be removed from the tree.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/11/390

I once suggested a template script that uses individual
--fix options to try to make it easier to clean up files.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/9/23/504

Maybe that could be used to supplement or replace Lindent.