Re: The grand indentation unification project

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Yes, it would, but the idea would be to set `indent-tabs-mode' to t, add
> `whitespace-cleanup to `before-save-hook', and have a single massive,
> horrible, ugly "whitespace unification" commit, and then everything after
> that follows the tab indent and whitespace styles. That way, you'd have one
> big patch with all the whitespace changes, but future patches wouldn't have
> any whitespace-only diffs.

Still sucks for everyone who's got a branch to keep in sync.

The problems you complain about (conflicts due to whitespace changes)
pretty much only show up because of such "helpful" commits.

So, no, we don't want any of that.  OTOH we would accept changes which
will enforce such "canonical spacing" in future commits (i.e. enforce
this canonicity but only on lines which are already changed for other
reasons anyway, thus not introducing new gratuitous conflicts).


        Stefan