Re: Question about commit message wrapping

From: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Dec 13, 2011, 03:14 UTC
Message-ID: <4EE6C31C.60909@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <op.v6edibfz0aolir@keputer>

On 12/12/2011 11:16 PM, Frans Klaver wrote:

> Wrapped code as in auto-wrapped? Or as in manually wrapped? Python
> programmers have significant white space, but you can still hard wrap
> stuff, as long as the next statement is properly indented.

This is incorrect. Python statements can only be broken across lines within unbalanced parenthesis (or using '\' or within a multiline string). For example,

    x =
        1

is a syntax error, while

    y = (
        1
        )

or

are both valid.

FWIW I think automatic wrapping of commit messages is a bad idea. I wrap my commit messages deliberately to make them look the way I want them to look. The assumption of an 80-character display has historical reasons, but it is also a relatively comfortable line-width to read (even on wider displays). And given that commit messages sometimes contain "flowable" paragraph text, sometimes code snippets, sometimes ASCII art, etc, no automatic wrapping will work correctly unless everybody agrees that commit messages must be written in some specific form of markup (or lightweight markup). And I can't imagine such a thing ever happening.

As for "future-proofing", do you really think there will be a lot of programming happening on mobile phones with less than 80-character-wide displays? (And even my little HTC can easily fit 80 characters if I rotate the phone to "landscape" mode.)

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger@alum.mit.edu
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/