Re: [PATCH 3/3] notes: don't indent empty lines

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Aug 30, 2021, 17:41 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cQ6FA0rUnkkTDRUD5vAD3cDXW9vtR1oX0pUJK5eJB9CHg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwno2505w.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 1:10 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
> > Like other Git commands, `git notes` takes care to call `stripspace` on
> > the user-supplied note content, thereby ensuring that it has no trailing
> > whitespace, among other cleanups. However, when notes are inserted into
> > a patch via `git format-patch --notes`, all lines of the note are
> > indented unconditionally, including empty lines, which leaves trailing
> > whitespace on lines which previously were empty, thus negating the
> > normalization done earlier. Fix this shortcoming.
>
> Playing the devil's advocate, it can be argued that using the same
> leading whitespace on a paragraph break line is actually a good
> thing.  Leaving them in would give the consumer an easy way to see
> which part was inserted from a note.

The, um, angel's response: `git format-patch --notes` is a convenience for the _submitter_ of a series. It is difficult to imagine a scenario[1] in which the _consumer_ of a series would care or need to know whether patch commentary was written by hand, inserted mechanically (by `--notes`), or inserted mechanically and then hand-edited.

The trailing whitespace is unusual within the Git sphere, as well as unsightly if you happen to have your editor configured to highlight trailing whitespace, and just "feels" sloppy.

[1]: I suppose mechanical extraction of notes may be one such scenario, allowing for simple-minded (not necessarily robust) extraction mechanics; i.e. start extracting after the /^Notes:$/ line and stop at the first line not indented with four blanks.