GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns [LWN.net]

GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Dec 26, 2012 8:40 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns by mlopezibanez
Parent article: GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

It would be ideal to generate the documentation of this stuff from the same description files that generate the code. But the incompatibility between GPL (code) and GFDL (docs) means that it cannot be done.

GFDL is one of RMS's worst ideas. When Debian regards RMS's pet licence as non-free, you know there's trouble. And surely it should have been obvious that it means trouble for auto-generated documentation.

However, the strategy of RMS [on C++ coding standards] is: "I don't like it, so I am not going to do anything about it and hope you get discouraged and switch back to C."

But GNU's C coding standards are awful! At least the parts on formatting code. The BSD style, as described in FreeBSD's style(9) manpage, is much better. I would think that an insistence on GNU C coding style would encourage developers to use another language and some sensible widely-accepted coding standard.

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GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Dec 28, 2012 1:58 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> I would think that an insistence on GNU C coding style would encourage developers to use another language
If that is the case, then it should be kept the way it is.

GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Jan 4, 2013 17:10 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

But GNU's C coding standards are awful! At least the parts on formatting code. The BSD style, as described in FreeBSD's style(9) manpage, is much better.

This is extremely debatable. I happen to prefer the GNU style, for the simple reason that I evolved a personal style very similar to it myself, decades ago, before I ever heard of GNU. I find the BSD style exceedingly cramped and hard to read. Nonetheless, my current job involves 95% BSD indentation and 5% GNU indentation, and, y'know, I adjusted in about half an hour.

I don't know of any actual research, let alone replicated, analyzing the effect of indentation style on error rates and the like. I suspect any such effect is marginal, on the grounds that if a large effect was seen, we wouldn't see such a wide variety of styles and such anger over the subject. Without that, such things remain a matter of taste, and there are no real grounds to say that one code style is better than another.

Of course this does not change the undisputable fact that my preferred style is better than yours and anyone who disagrees is clearly a traitor and should be fed on by demons for the next thousand years and made to use Microsoft Word atop Windows ME as their text editor.