[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] doc/developer: Better {} style rule

[Devin Heitmueller]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 5:57 PM James Almer <jamrial at gmail.com> wrote:
> > would loooove a format defining script with a prehook that formats your
> > patches before sending <3
>
> That can be done automatically as one of the many jobs CI runs once we
> move to forgejo/gitlab. Same with every other check in patcheck.

In my opinion, developers generally want to clean up style issues
prior to submission.  The problem with doing it in a CI job is that it
will just tell you after the fact that your patch didn't meet the
coding standards and you have to revise and resubmit.  The alternative
is for the CI job to "fix" the patch to conform, which people
generally don't want because what they submitted is different than
what gets committed.

For what it's worth, with the Linux Kernel we solved this years ago
with a "checkpatch.pl" which developers can run prior to committing.
Thus I could quickly run checkpatch.pl, fix anything it complains
about, and then run git commit and be confident that it conforms to
the standard.  Personally I prefer this approach as it lets me fix the
patches prior to submission, and the CI system isn't changing things
without my knowledge.

That said, I'm not necessarily against a CI job which validates it
meets the coding standards and kicks it back, to catch cases where the
developer failed to run checkpatch prior to submission.  This approach
only really works well though if the developer had an automated means
to run the check his/herself prior to submission.

Devin

-- 
Devin Heitmueller, Senior Software Engineer
LTN Global Communications
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