Re: What's the line length limit in the Emacs codebase?

[Philipp Stephani]

Am Fr., 25. Dez. 2020 um 18:43 Uhr schrieb Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>:
>
> > This seems overly complicated, and people are unlikely to follow
> > complicated rules.
>
> I don't think there is a need for a simplistic rule that is
> strictly enforced.  Where have you seen such a need?

Nowhere, it's more of a question. I don't intend to introduce a
strictly enforced rule, but just having a statement saying "stay
within 70 columns until there are good reasons (mostly long URLs)
otherwise" would provide some guidance to people editing the codebase.

>
> IOW, I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve.

Line length is a typical bikeshedding problem that's best solved by
picking a number and then sticking to it.

>
> AFAIK we already enforce the complicated rule discretely by setting
> `fill-column` to 70 in `.dir-locals.el` and by re-wrapping or
> complaining about lines that pass the 80-column limit.
>

We could then change the complaining/re-wrapping to start at 71
columns and would achieve the same effect.

I don't think we need to change too much here, maybe nothing at all:
let's just use the 70-column limit more consistently from now on in
new/changed code.