Re: master 50020d026c: Untabify rcirc.el

[Stefan Monnier]

> My apologies, I didn't know that there was a general rule like this.
> The last few times I had been working on rcirc I always ran into issues
> with whitespaces whenever indenting a function.  Every patch had
> unrelated whitespace changes that had to be reverted to that the
> historical record isn't polluted.

Whitespace changes are "by definition" gratuitous.  We don't disallow
them, but they should be limited to the lines that are changed for other
reasons as well.
[ Note also that there are degrees: e.g. reindentation is not 100%
  gratuitous, contrary to tabify/untabify.  ]

> On a related note, I believe there has been a need to reorder rcirc to
> make it easier to follow along for a while.  But it goes without saying
> that that would break the git history far more than this change.

This is yet elsewhere on the scale of "gratuitous", so we also prefer to
refrain from doing so, but sometimes it's justified (usually together
with a string of other, more substantial, changes).


        Stefan "guilty of many non-whitespace but still gratuitous changes"