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Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 07:12:19 -0700
From: Kathey Marsden <kmarsdenderby@sbcglobal.net>
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Subject: Code formatting debate, confusion and wasted time , Has it gone on
  long enough?
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In a comment in DERBY-1302 Knut Anders said ....
 >If we want to reindent large parts of the code, I think we should do
 >it sometime after 10.1.3 is released and before the 10.2 branch is
 >created, and we should try to use a style that is used elsewhere in
 >the code (I prefer tab-free code myself).

Perhaps we have all lived in the code formatting "Tower of Babel" long 
enough.  I think code formatting like language doesn't matter as long as 
everyone understands it and it is consistent.  I would like to propose 
that we:

1) Choose and document  a format. 
    I think everyone can agree to get rid of the tabs.  Otherwise ...
     The volunteer doing the work gets to propose the format and only 
very serious objections should be raised
           in the interest of getting this done.  Some Apache examples 
are at:
                 
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/faqs.html#Coding%20Conventions%20and%20Standards
2) Set a date six weeks out from the completion of the code formatting 
documentation  for the reformat so folks can plan accordingly.
3) See if there are volunteers willing to determine the correct settings 
for Eclipse, Net Beans and other IDE's.
4) On the reformatting date, reformat both the trunk and the 10.1 branch 
so that fixes can be merged easily.

Extra credit, think about  long term maintenance, checking,  and 
auto-formatting.

Does anyone have any  objections to a plan like this? If not I will 
create a Jira entry and subtasks. Anyone tired enough of this issue to 
take on  this task?

Kathey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel