2010/11/8 Łukasz Langa lukasz@langa.pl:
Am 07.11.2010 19:28, schrieb Benjamin Peterson:
2010/11/7 Victor Stinnervictor.stinner@haypocalc.com:
I would like to know if it would be possible to block a commit introducing nonbreaking spaces? A least for me :-)
I don't think add pre-commit hooks for every conceivable mistake is the right way to go.
I see you're basically saying "We're all adults here" and that we should be able to control our own environment so these kinds of commits don't happen (like Guido said). Well guess what, I believe that isn't going to work. Let me tell you why.
- Most* contributors work on Python in their spare time. That means they
also have jobs, families, all kinds of everyday trouble. Even if 99% of the time their performance is stellar, there will be times when some stupid errors get through.
- We invite more contributors now which means there are going to be more
rookies than ever before. I for one am an example of that. You either expect newbies to perform like their own mentors from day one or expect mentors to waste time working out dumb rookie mistakes made because of a misconfigured environment, etc.
- Speaking of environments, they change. Software evolves, people switch
machines, operating systems, editors, toolchains. If one Debian veteran switches to Mac OS X and makes some error because of false assumptions, misconfigured software, whatever... his experience should prevent other people from making the same mistake in the future.
I could go on and risk boring you to death. The point is, if we can automate stuff out of the workflow, we should definitely do it. Each and every time. We don't gain anything by not implementing automation.
I don't think you can ever automate "checking for mistakes" out of the workflow. There will never be a commit hook that checks whether you created a race condition or deference possibly uninitialized memory. IMO, if you're unwilling to be looking for simple and complex bugs, you should think twice before committing at all.
Even if that commit hook prevents a single wrong commit a year, it's worth it. As unpaid volunteers, we don't have time for hunting the same mistakes twice.
One last disclaimer. I'm not a native speaker so if the tone of my post sounds offensive or rude, I apologise in advance because that was not my intention. OTOH, the zen says explicit is better than diplomatic. Or something like that.