Re: [RFC] Cosmetic changes to define-configuration usage

[Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>]

Hi Bruno,

Bruno Victal <mirai@makinata.eu> writes:

> On 2023-03-31 15:46, Maxim Cournoyer wrote:> I have some apprehension
> that if we start adding white space between the
>> fields here, we'll soon have people adding white space to many other
>> places (for consistency or other reasons), which I wouldn't welcome (I
>> value compactness, and since in Scheme a single newline is used to
>> delimit things at the top level, too much of white space can make things
>> less readable in my opinion).
>
> I don't think it needs to be an all-or-nothing situation,
> the spacing rules can be always applied selectively “when it makes sense”.
>
> I think spaces between fields is consistent with the general way of things,
> for instance, throughout Guix, sections that are only scheme code often do
> have some spaces here and there that were added without any adherence to some
> rigid criteria but the programmer found it to be an adequate point to 
> partition the logic.
>
> The same reasoning applies here, the logic partitioning is done per field instead.
> Objectively, there's also a small quantitative difference that's not commonly
> present in the rest of the codebase. define-configuration handles both code and documentation,
> or putting it another way, it intersperses code and (rather long) strings. The result
> is that it's particularly information-dense compared to any other part of the guix codebase.

You make convincing arguments.  If it's understood that it makes sense
in this specific case and not to be taken as "let's add white space to
all the records in the Guix code base", I don't oppose the change, if
people find it makes a difference for the better in terms of readability.

Are there people who would like to block the change?  Otherwise, I'll
contribute it as-is in a few days.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim