Re: untabify, coding standards

[Bruno Haible]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Is this style something we want to try push into the GNU Coding Standard
> and/or into the GNU indent default?
> 
> I don't care much about coding styles conventions, but I care about
> consistency.  Moving away from the default style of GNU indent in gnulib
> seems a bit inconsistent to me.  I can't find anything about tab vs
> space in the coding standard though.  Thoughts?

I think it's too early for pushing this into the GNU Coding Standards.
Big code repositories like GCC and glibc are still using tabs. coreutils
and gnulib are just the spearhead. At this point in time, we would
experience more resistance than approval.

It's similar to the use of UTF-8 for ChangeLog files: In 2000, most
people would have been opposed to it. In 2007 or so, even the Emacs
ChangeLog switched to UTF-8. Nowadays, no one even thinks about it
any more.

If you care about consistency, you can switch your projects to the
spaces-only style soon. Yes, it's probably easier to switch your
habit once for all projects, than to continue using different
habits for different projects.

Bruno