[Lemon-devel] TABs vs. SPACEs

[Alpár Jüttner]

Hi,

Currently we uses two spaces for indentation. We follow this very
consistently throughout the repository. However it is not clear how to
use TABs. By default, Emacs (which is the default editor of most of us)
automatically replaces each 8 spaces with a tab. This is nice but may
cause problems for people for using some less advanced editor and often
leads accidental whitespace changes in the changesets.

The first question is: should we get rid of tabs?

If yes, the second one is: how?

It is possible to configure Emacs not to use tabs. In fact there are too
options.
      * This option can be set globally in Emacs. Then everybody must
        configure his/her Emacs in this way and use it for all projects
        and all files. Not very appealing.
      * It can be set as a file local variable. To to it automatically,
        the fist line of the each file in the repo should me modified.
        This is nice, but some extra care should be taken when a new
        file in created of ported from svn.

If we decide to change,
      * All source files should be untabified and the headers should be
        modified. I can do it quite easily, but is must be done at a
        point when there are no patches waiting for review.
      * Later, the same must be done with all new ports. (Unless we also
        untabify the svn repo.)
              * Probably, the scripts/update-copyright-header.sh should
                also be modify to also untabify the source files.

I would like to hear your opinion.

Best regards,
Alpar