[aur-dev] AUR Coding recomendations IMPORTANT

[Sebastian Nowicki]

On 21/06/2008, at 5:30 AM, chi at chimeric.de wrote:

> Even though the changes I've sent until now where small, I also  
> agree with
> Loui, when he says the AUR is more in maintenance mode (IIRC there  
> where
> already two attempts for AUR2, though I don't know much about their  
> current
> state).

Being the main dev of the second attempt at AUR2, I'd like to know as  
well :P.

I think sticking to coding conventions is a good idea. Developers  
should be disciplined and strictly adhere to them, it really does make  
maintenance easier. I'd be great if people also wrote doxygen/phpdoc  
documentation to make maintenance and later development much, much  
easier. It doesn't matter if the code won't be used by anyone else,  
internal documentation is also very useful. Having said that, I don't  
know if a lot of effort should be put into fixing up the current code  
base (especially technical writing). I think everyone agrees that the  
AUR needs a rewrite.

> The problem, as I see it for someone who likes to send a patch, is,  
> that
> you usually address a specific "problem" with a patch. Although  
> cleaning
> the code makes always sense, it should IMHO be separated into separate
> patch sets and not mixed with other patches in order to not blur the
> "real" purpose of a patch.

I don't really see a problem with fixing up the code in terms of  
conventions along with other changes, as long as only the lines of  
code that would be changed either way are fixed up. If you go and  
change a bunch of other code, then that really should be in a separate  
patch. Of course when cherry-picking patches or something, it  
sometimes is nicer to have very specific patches, so that it would be  
possible to apply the "code standard adhering" patch to some other  
branch.