Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] Add project-wide .vimrc configuration

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 15, 2020, 01:39 UTC
Message-ID: <X9gT57SAHzGm3ET2@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <X9Lf1p++YktzZMWe@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 02:56:22AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> > > * We should not ship editor-specific files in the main directory of the
> > >   repository.
> > 
> > Why not?
> 
> Best practices indicate that we don't check in files which are specific
> to a developer.  Anything that controls the specific editor people use
> is by definition specific to the developer.  Checking in these files
> leads to conflicts over which settings to apply and whose settings are
> better when they could just be avoided.

I think that's a good general policy, but it's not unreasonable to help people make configure some widely used tools. The key things to me are:

  - we should do so at the most general level possible. I agree that
    .editorconfig is the right level for features it supports. But
    there are bits being suggested here that I think it does not (like
    how to indent case labels).

    We also have .clang-format, for which there's a vim plugin (but I've
    not used it, nor editorconfig, myself). It seems like it may support
    more options.

  - people who use the editor config take responsibility for maintaining
    it, and nobody else needs to care. E.g., I'd expect editorconfig to
    more of a source of truth than any vim config, and if there's a
    conflict for people who care about vim to sort it out (and not
    somebody who touched .editorconfig).

  - it doesn't suggest any actions that might be bad practices. I agree
    that the instructions for auto-loading this .vimrc are more
    complicated than necessary and might have security implications.
    Carrying a file in contrib/vim that says "copy this to ~/.vim/foo"
    or even "copy these lines to your ~/.vimrc" seems a lot safer. And
    it makes it easier for people who prefer to adapt the config to
    their own setup.

So I'm not opposed to carrying some vim config, but I think it's best to focus on simplicity and providing human-readable instructions, rather than ad-hoc plugin infrastructure.

-Peff