On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 11:03 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
>> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 10:40:10PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> TBH I'm not sure we should be changing pgindent at this late date, even if
>>> there is a good fix for its minor annoyances. When you changed its wrap
>>> behavior in 8.1, I spent the next several years cursing that decision
>>> every time I had to back-patch something, because it caused apply failures
>>> for just about every nontrivial patch. Doing what we're talking about
>>> here would be just as bad.
>
>> Would you like to see how many comments get changed by the adjustment?
>> Could we run it in all back branches, perhaps only on C comments?
>
> Hm. Reindenting the active back branches would fix the back-patching
> issue, but it would also be a pain in the rear for anybody carrying
> out-of-tree patches; which is probably the majority of our packagers.
>
> On the third hand, updating such patches would only be a one-time
> chore (as long as we fix pgindent only *once*, not anytime the mood
> strikes us), so maybe it wouldn't be impossible. Especially if we
> constrain ourselves to just fixing tabs vs. spaces, so that "patch
> --ignore-whitespace" could be used to apply old patches.
If we do it once, we're likely to do it again; and even if we only do
it once, so what? It's still a nuisance.
If this only affects a handful of places, then sure, let's go ahead
and fix it. But if it's going to create a massive enough diff that
we've gotta think about back-patching it, then IMHO it's totally not
worth it.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
