Open Source Contribution Etiquette • Hacker News Board

Re: Open Source Contribution Etiquette

#11

Post by jcapote » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 5:18 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #4

Wow, I had never heard of someone doing major reformatting, reorganizing, or refactoring on someone else's code before submitting a patch! I would say that anyone who would do such a thing doesn't understand what it means to work with other people!

Yea neither have I, that's crazy. I try to make my patches as small as possible (makes it easier to merge as well)

Re: Open Source Contribution Etiquette

#12

Post by barrkel » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 9:45 AM UTC

Indeed, the code formatting style used by Mono (eg spaces before argument parens like "SomeMethod ()") is one of the biggest reasons I'll probably never contribute to it. I can't change the existing style, but it makes my eyes bleed to read, so I avoid it.

Re: Open Source Contribution Etiquette

#13

Post by michaelchisari » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 9:56 AM UTC

I've always thought a general etiquette guide and howto for contributing to open source projects would be useful.

Re: Open Source Contribution Etiquette

#14

Post by xsltuser2010 » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #12

Indeed, the code formatting style used by Mono (eg spaces before argument parens like "SomeMethod ()") is one of the biggest reasons I'll probably never contribute to it. I can't change the existing style, but it makes my eyes bleed to read, so I avoid it.

Maybe it would be a good idea not only to have coding standards, but also automatic handling of auto-formatting code when checking in. If you have a highly flexible coding style system like uncrustify for example, and check ins would be guaranteed to be automatically formatted, you could simply tell vim or emacs to format it with your coding style when opening, and then auto-format it for check in.. I know it's oversimplifying, but maybe it would help some people.

Re: Open Source Contribution Etiquette

#15

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 6:38 PM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #4

Wow, I had never heard of someone doing major reformatting, reorganizing, or refactoring on someone else's code before submitting a patch! I would say that anyone who would do such a thing doesn't understand what it means to work with other people!

Yeah, I'm not denying it happens, but it seems like common sense to me. The type of programmer inclined to refactor and rename should be the first to recognize the value of uniform coding conventions within a project.