Re: on reputation and lines and putting things places (Re: gcc branches?)

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

>>>>> "Joseph" == Joseph S Myers <jsm28@cam.ac.uk> writes:

Joseph> That sort of problem is what *I* generally see as merge
Joseph> problems - failure to follow coding standards, especially as
Joseph> regards to documentation (including comments), when patches
Joseph> are submitted, even though the issues involved have been
Joseph> cleaned up in the tree before.

I agree.  But as you point out it's hard to keep up with all the
changes that go through.

In automake our approach has been to automate the checking of such
changes.  For instance, if we discover a new systemic error (sh and
make bugs occasionally pop up that require a sweep across all of
automake), we add a new entry to the `maintainer-check' target.  Then
you can run `make maintainer-check' to see if anything has regressed.
Maintainers are expected to keep the code maintainer-check-clean.

This is basically the same idea as poisoning identifiers in system.h.
As we've seen with warnings, if we can't automate it, there will be
regressions.

Tom