Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] scripts/checkpatch.pl: Enforce multiline comment syntax

[Peter Maydell]

On 10 August 2018 at 13:45, Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 10/08/2018 11:10, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>> So my proposal, which is actually consistent with what QEMU is doing, is
>>> the following:
>>>
>>> 1) the first line of a file should always be "/*", otherwise warn
>>>
>>> 2) a comment that starts with "/**" should have it on a lone line
>>>
>>> 3) every other multiline comment should start with
>>> "/*<whitespace><something>"
>> Personally I would prefer your suggestion, but as I say, there
>> was no consensus in the thread for it, and there was consensus
>> for "use the kernel's style here". I don't think we gain much
>> from reopening the debate at this point.
>
> What we lose is that 3000 more new warnings appear.  So if we make an
> exception and convert all of the comments, I'm okay.
>
> But otherwise, at least Eric, you, me (only now I admit), Thomas
> expressed a preference for the other style; on the other side it's
> Markus, Stefan, Conny and Alex, some of whom were okay with applying
> maintainer discretion; John and rth wanted a third one but disagreed on
> their second choice.  I appreciate your writing the patch, but I'm not
> sure that's consensus...

What I strongly want is that checkpatch should (a) catch stuff
I get wrong and (b) catch stuff that other people get wrong,
so I don't have to nitpick over coding style myself (which I
have done for multiline comment style in the past). So to me
the current situation (checkpatch doesn't warn at all about
out-of-style multiline comments) is no good.

Nobody runs checkpatch on the whole existing codebase anyway,
do they? So I think "3000 new warnings" is a red herring.

thanks
-- PMM