Any exceptions for the 15-line rule?

[Dmitry Gutov]

I've received a pull request [0] today for company-mode's Clang backend
that's essentially a request to borrow some (fairly simple) code from
the auto-complete-clang project [1].

The latter is licensed under GPLv3+, but I'm pretty sure the author
(brianjcj AT gmail, not sure what's his full name) has not signed the
CA. And I'm not wild about the idea of waiting several months to add the
feature (that is, if the author even agrees to sign the CA).

The change itself is almost entirely dictated by the interface provided
by the clang program, so while I can tweak a thing here and there to try
to create an independent implementation, it's not like solving a complex
problem, which you can approach from different directions.

For example, the definition of `company-clang--lang-option' the patch
[2] adds is more or less what takes it over the 15 lines limit. I said
I'll try to rewrite it, but should I bother?

It's basically a set of information about what values the "-x" option
takes, and while I can replace the main `cond' with the less efficient
`replace-string', the result will still resemble the original very
strongly.

Speaking of one of the stated reasons behind the CA, this is not the
kind of code I'd ever expect FSF to go to court over.

--Dmitry

[0] https://github.com/company-mode/company-mode/pull/17
[1] https://github.com/brianjcj/auto-complete-clang
[2] https://github.com/company-mode/company-mode/pull/17.diff