Re: run pgindent on a regular basis / scripted manner

Hi,

On 2023-01-23 10:09:06 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> 1. I'd originally thought vaguely that we could teach pgindent
> how to build pg_bsd_indent automatically. But with a little
> more consideration, I doubt that would work transparently.
> It's common (at least for me) to run pgindent in a distclean'd
> tree, where configure results wouldn't be available. It's even
> worse if you habitually use VPATH builds, so that those files
> *never* exist in your source tree. So now I think that we should
> stick to the convention that it's on the user to install
> pg_bsd_indent somewhere in their PATH; all we'll be doing with
> this change is eliminating the step of fetching pg_bsd_indent's
> source files from somewhere else.

I think it'd be better to build pg_bsd_indent automatically as you planned
earlier - most others don't run pgindent from a distcleaned source tree. And
it shouldn't be hard to teach pgindent to run from a vpath build directory.

I'd like to get to the point where we can have simple build target for
a) re-indenting the whole tree
b) re-indenting the files touched in changes compared to master

If we add that to the list of things to do before sending a patch upstream,
we're a heck of a lot more likely to get decently formatted patches compared
to today.

As long as we need typedefs.list, I think it'd be good for such a target to
add new typedefs found in the local build to typedefs.list (but *not* remove
old ones, due to platform dependent code). But that's a separate enough
topic...

> 2. Given #1, it'll be prudent to continue having pgindent
> double-check that pg_bsd_indent reports a specific version
> number.

+1

> 3. If we do nothing special, the first mass reindentation is
> going to reformat the pg_bsd_indent sources per PG style,
> which is ... er ... not the way they look now. Do we want
> to accept that outcome, or take steps to prevent pgindent
> from processing pg_bsd_indent? I have a feeling that manual
> cleanup would be necessary if we let such reindentation
> happen, but I haven't experimented.

I think we should exempt it, initially at least. If somebody decides to invest
a substantial amount of time in pgindent, let's change it, but I'm somewhat
doubtful that'll happen anytime soon.

Greetings,

Andres Freund