Re: GOP-PROP 1: python formatting - probable decision

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 02:59:10PM +0100, Phil Holmes wrote:
> "use 4 spaces per indentation level"
> "a text editor could be used to replace \t with 8 spaces"
>
> Unless we have only ever used tabs to represent double indents, this
> isn't self consistent.

That is exactly what happened.
- python files written by me used a tab to represent one indent.
- python files that were written by people using emacs used one
  tab to represent two indents.
- python files written by sensible people used no tabs, and
  represented an indent with 4 spaces.

I believe that thanks to James' work, we now have *no* tabs being
used for indentation in any .py file in git.  This is correct, and
we shall strive to keep to this.

The changed indentation was present in 2.15.3, so I was kind-of
expecting to see a raft of bug reports about various .py commands
breaking... but so far there haven't been any problems.  So I
cautiously believe that however James did the conversion, he did
it correctly.

If we see any python errors in the next few weeks, indentation is
the first thing that I'd suspect.

> There are also a number of examples of indented lines under function
> definitions/calls - the parameters are normally indented.  I think
> we should explicitly state a rule for this.

hmm... I don't think this is such a big deal, and in any case I
don't think that we should tack on an extra rule after officially
closing the debate.

I'm open to adding it as a separate GOP issue, but I think that
just about every other GOP policy question has higher priority
than this -- it'd probably happen in Oct or Nov?  When I think
we're running out of important policies (probably in Aug), I'll
ask people to brainstorm for more stuff that we should discuss.

Cheers,
- Graham