Re: Questionable "cosmetic changes" commits

[Hartmut Goebel]

Hi Martin,

Am 02.12.20 um 19:55 schrieb Mark H Weaver:
> I think that commits like this are best avoided for several reasons.
[…]
> Should I change those things back the next time I update that package?

My main project (PyInstaller) has the policy to not accept any
white-space changes and reformatting, except this is done due to
functional change. I'm very picky about this, since digging through a
pile of cosmetic changes to find the cause of a functional change is
cumbersome.

For guix packages, finding the cause of a functional change is less of
an issue. Anyhow, each change contributes to the load of data to be
transferred. This not only is an issue for people with low bandwidths,
but also contributes to climate change. The later is especially true,
since "guix pull" pulls all changes on all machines using guix - so each
single change will be downloaded many thousand time for next 10 years.

-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |