RE: [boost] Re: Review: Boost Coding Guidelines

From: jeff_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-07-17 10:35:51

> I don't think that code formatting and commenting are irrelevant to quality.
> Source code is fundamentally there for communication with human readers.
> Otherwise we'd just compile it and throw the source away. Other major
> successful open-source projects (e.g. GNU) have formatting standards. That
> doesn't prove it's a good idea for boost, but it does prove that it's viable
> and that some people even consider it important.

By quality I was referring to the quality of the derived product. I have never
received an end user defect report b/c of a missing comment.  I have b/c I
failed to handle an exception correctly.

I don't deny that "code quality" depends on consistent and reasonable formatting
and commenting. Only that it is extremely difficult to get agreement b/c many of
these are related to a preferred "style".  As previously mentioned by someone
else, the key reason for formatting requirements is consistency amongst a
development team, and so this is certainly less of an issue for boost except
during library review.  I only wish that there was a real code formatting tool
so that formatting could be generated instead of coded...

BTW, in case I wasn't clear, I think much of what is in guidelines a good.

> > 11.16.    Step through each line of code you write or change in a
> debugger. This
>
> This guideline was not designed with boost in mind, and I wouldn't mind
> striking it. There are probably a few others of the same nature.

Ok.

> > -->Must grant permission to copy, use and modify the software for any use
> > (commercial and non-commercial) for no fee.
>
> FWIW, the plan was to change that to something more suitable.

Ok.  I hadn't seen a final resolution of this...

> Finally, I have no axe to grind about getting these guidelines, or a variant
> thereof, accepted into boost. If they are rejected, I will only wish that
> the formal review had begun earlier so that I wouldn't have spent so much
> time on them here.

Even if it fails, hopefully the review should have improved the guidelines, no?
So in any case all is not lost.

Also, I would recommend a phased approach.  If you take the formatting /
commenting guidelines off the table and focus on the other guidelines as best
coding practices as a first phase...

Jeff