Thread: pgindent-polluted commits

I've noticed commits, from a few of you, carrying pgindent changes to lines
the patch would not otherwise change.  (That is to say, the next pgindent run
would have made the same changes anyway.)  From
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Submitting_a_Patch#Reasons_your_patch_might_be_returned:
 The fastest way to get your patch rejected is to make unrelated changes. Reformatting lines that haven't changed,
changingunrelated comments you felt were poorly worded, touching code not necessary to your change, etc.
 

Commits should follow the same high standards we ask of submissions.  Several
pgindent strategies do conform:

1) Run pgindent, then manually reduce its changes to the subset that your  patch caused.
2) Don't run pgindent yourself; commit code that pgindent may later change.
3) Push a commit containing nothing but a pgindent run of the files you care  about, then push a second commit for your
feature/bugfix.

Please use of one of those next time you'd run pgindent.

Thanks,
nm

Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> On 13 January 2016 at 14:48, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
>> I've noticed commits, from a few of you, carrying pgindent changes to lines
>> the patch would not otherwise change.

> Could we review again why this matters?

Basically this is trading off convenience of the committer (all of the
alternatives Noah mentions are somewhat annoying) versus the convenience
of post-commit reviewers.  I'm not sure that his recommendation is the
best trade-off, nor that the situation is precisely comparable to
pre-commit review.  There definitely will be pre-commit review, there
may or may not be any post-commit review.

I'm willing to go with the "separate commit to reindent individual files"
approach if there's a consensus that that makes for a cleaner git history.
But I'm not 100% convinced it matters.
        regards, tom lane

> On Jan 13, 2016, at 9:13 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
>> On 13 January 2016 at 14:48, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
>>> I've noticed commits, from a few of you, carrying pgindent changes to lines
>>> the patch would not otherwise change.
>
>> Could we review again why this matters?
>
> Basically this is trading off convenience of the committer (all of the
> alternatives Noah mentions are somewhat annoying) versus the convenience
> of post-commit reviewers.  I'm not sure that his recommendation is the
> best trade-off, nor that the situation is precisely comparable to
> pre-commit review.  There definitely will be pre-commit review, there
> may or may not be any post-commit review.
>
> I'm willing to go with the "separate commit to reindent individual files"
> approach if there's a consensus that that makes for a cleaner git history.
> But I'm not 100% convinced it matters.

As somebody who maintains a fork of the code base, I can say it is easier
to deal with merge conflicts when work is broken out into smaller commits.
Separating whitespace and formatting changes into their own commits
would make my life a little easier.

OTOH, I don't know if the core developer community cares about the ease
of maintaining code forks.


mark

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I'm willing to go with the "separate commit to reindent individual files"
> approach if there's a consensus that that makes for a cleaner git history.
> But I'm not 100% convinced it matters.

I recently changed the configuration of my text editor to
automatically use the "git blame" whitespace flag when using its git
plugin. I did this because there was a tendency for pgindent commits
to freeze everything for several seconds when I made the mistake of
looking at a pgindent commit diff. This approach seems to work nicely,
without any downside that I've noticed.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

On 01/13/2016 12:13 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
>> On 13 January 2016 at 14:48, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
>>> I've noticed commits, from a few of you, carrying pgindent changes to lines
>>> the patch would not otherwise change.
>> Could we review again why this matters?
> Basically this is trading off convenience of the committer (all of the
> alternatives Noah mentions are somewhat annoying) versus the convenience
> of post-commit reviewers.  I'm not sure that his recommendation is the
> best trade-off, nor that the situation is precisely comparable to
> pre-commit review.  There definitely will be pre-commit review, there
> may or may not be any post-commit review.
>
> I'm willing to go with the "separate commit to reindent individual files"
> approach if there's a consensus that that makes for a cleaner git history.
> But I'm not 100% convinced it matters.
>
>             



I do think it makes life easier when going through the git history if 
semantic changes are separated from formatting changes.

cheers

andrew

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:25 AM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
> I do think it makes life easier when going through the git history if
> semantic changes are separated from formatting changes.

I agree.  And I agree with Mark Dilger's point, too.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 12:13:11PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> > On 13 January 2016 at 14:48, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
> >> I've noticed commits, from a few of you, carrying pgindent changes to lines
> >> the patch would not otherwise change.
> 
> > Could we review again why this matters?
> 
> Basically this is trading off convenience of the committer (all of the
> alternatives Noah mentions are somewhat annoying) versus the convenience
> of post-commit reviewers.  I'm not sure that his recommendation is the
> best trade-off, nor that the situation is precisely comparable to
> pre-commit review.  There definitely will be pre-commit review, there
> may or may not be any post-commit review.

That's a good summary.

> I'm willing to go with the "separate commit to reindent individual files"
> approach if there's a consensus that that makes for a cleaner git history.
> But I'm not 100% convinced it matters.

Thanks.

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 09:57:45AM +0000, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On 16 January 2016 at 02:10, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 12:13:11PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> > > Basically this is trading off convenience of the committer (all of the
> > > alternatives Noah mentions are somewhat annoying) versus the convenience
> > > of post-commit reviewers.  I'm not sure that his recommendation is the
> > > best trade-off, nor that the situation is precisely comparable to
> > > pre-commit review.  There definitely will be pre-commit review, there
> > > may or may not be any post-commit review.
> >
> > That's a good summary.

> My objective in committing patches to PostgreSQL is to develop the Open
> Source version of PostgreSQL as a standalone product and I encourage others
> to do the same.
> 
> PostgreSQL is open source and therefore usable for various additional
> purposes, one of which is modified versions of PostgreSQL.
> 
> I will not go out of my way to cause problems for the secondary users of
> the code. I will try to implement one of the suggestions for whitespace
> handling, though may make mistakes in that, nobody being perfect.

Thanks.  Clean commits help so many audiences, including immediate post-commit
reviewers, intensive beta testers, fork maintainers, and hackers performing
root cause analysis on the bugs to be discovered in future years.  For what
it's worth, most committers already have been using some mix of strategy 2
(leave pgindent entirely to Bruce) and strategy 1 (neither add nor remove work
for the next whole-tree pgindent to do).  If you're already in that majority,
I advise no change.