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| -rw-r--r-- | posts/2015-07-25-dont-remove-white-spaces.org | 65 |
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diff --git a/posts/2015-07-25-dont-remove-white-spaces.org b/posts/2015-07-25-dont-remove-white-spaces.org deleted file mode 100644 index 353edea..0000000 --- a/posts/2015-07-25-dont-remove-white-spaces.org +++ /dev/null @@ -1,65 +0,0 @@ -I don't like trailing white spaces in my source code. I've configured my -editors to highlight them so I don't add them by accident, and when -possible, I remove them. But it doesn't mean that all of them should be -removed blindly. - -In this post, I'm talking about files that are managed by a SCM. When -working on such a text file, editor's hooks that delete them when -writing a file can be more annoying than keeping them in place. A change -should only touch lines that are relevant to the fix or feature beeing -added. Touching lines that are not relevant are creating noise in the -history. I've made this mistake in the past, and I've learned my -lessons. - -** Pain for the reviewer - -The person who will review the change will have to make an extra effort -to understand why the diff highlight some lines where it looks like -there's no change. It's a distraction to his main task, and it doesn't -bring any benefit to the change beeing submitted. - -** Pain for the person browsing the history - -When someone browse the history and try to understand what changed -between two versions, the deletion is just noise. It's already hard to -make the mental effort to read a diff, and understand what and why -things have changed. Adding some extra noise is annoying. - -Running a tool like =git blame= shows how useless this is, for both the -person reading the history and the author. - -** Tips - -Configure your editor to highlight them. If you are using Emacs, you can -do it with - -#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE - (require 'whitespace) - (global-whitespace-mode 1) - (setq whitespace-style '(face trailing tabs tab-mark)) -#+END_EXAMPLE - -With vim, you can add the following: - -#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE - set list lcs=trail:·,tab:»· - highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red -#+END_EXAMPLE - -It's also possible to configure =git= to highlight them when running -=git add -p=, by running - -#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE - git config --global core.whitespace trailing-space,space-before-tab -#+END_EXAMPLE - -=git= will complain if it finds white spaces in your change, so you have -time to fix and remove them. - -If you really don't want any trailing white spaces, you can also -configure your SCM with a post-commit hook to reject commits that -contains them. - -If you're using =vimdiff= to read a diff, it's possible to not highlight -white spaces with =set diffopt+=iwhite=. This can makes it a little bit -easier to read messy diff. |