[GSoC14][RFC] Is there any interest in adding a port of checkpatch.pl to contrib/?

It seems to me that the topic of adding the checkpatch.pl script to Git's source tree has cropped up several times in the past, as recently as a couple of days ago: $gmane/243607.

It should be noted that its usage for its sake has been discouraged by Junio Hamano in $gmane/205998. Also, its use is somewhat controversial and has led to flames and even a public fork.

Despite this, I think that git might benefit from a port of checkpatch.pl. In fact, even Junio had admitted to use part of its features later in $gmane/205998.

We could simply use linux's script/checkpatch.pl, but I think a port is needed for these reasons:

1. Git style guidelines are somewhat different and less strict than
their Linux equivalents.
2. Several patch threads bounce back and forth because of style fixes.
A checkpatch script added as a hook could help reduce these and use
more efficiently our time.
3. As far as I can tell, checkpatch needs to be run from the root
folder of a linux repository clone. Cloning several hundred MBs for a
single perl script looks a little foolish to me.

So, is there any interest in adding a port of checkpatch.pl to contrib/? I might work on this as part of GSoC. I still haven't submitted my application about git bisect (life got in the way!), but Michael Heggarty remarked in $gmane/242703 that my original idea had too little meat in it to constitute a good GSoC proposal.

Cheers, Jacopo Notarstefano