Re: [PATCH v4 02/19] flake8: Enforce shorter line length for comments and docstrings

[Markus Armbruster]

John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> writes:

> On 3/26/21 2:26 AM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> writes:
>> 
>>> On 3/25/21 11:21 AM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>>>> John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> PEP8's BDFL writes: "For flowing long blocks of text with fewer
>>>>> structural restrictions (docstrings or comments), the line length should
>>>>> be limited to 72 characters."
>>>>>
>>>>> I do not like this patch. I have included it explicitly to recommend we
>>>>> do not pay any further heed to the 72 column limit.
>>>>>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to get the remainder of this series moving again before digging
>>>> into this patch.
>>>
>>> I am dropping it, then -- I have no interest in bringing a patch I
>>> dislike along for another respin.
>> Despite your dislike, there might be good parts, and if there are,
>> I'd
>> like to mine them.  I don't need you to track the patch for that,
>> though.  Feel free to drop it.
>> Thank you for exploring the max-doc-length option.
>> 
>
> Being less terse about it: Mostly, I don't like how it enforces this
> column width even for indented structures. Generally, we claim that 72 
> columns is "comfortable to read" and I agree.
>
>                                    However, when we start in a margin, I
>                                    am not convinced that this is
>                                    actually more readable than the
>                                    alternative. We aren't using our full
>                                    72 characters here.
>
> For personal projects I tend to relax the column limit to about 100
> chars, which gives nice breathing room and generally reduces the edge 
> cases for error strings and so on. (Not suggesting we do that here so
> long as we remain on a mailing-list based workflow.)
>
> I can't say I am a fan of the limit; I don't think it's something I
> can reasonably enforce for python/* so I have some concerns over 
> consistency, so I think it'd be easier to just not.

I'm with PEP 8 here: go beyond the line length limits juidicously, not
carelessly.

This cannot be enforced automatically with the tools we have.

> I *did* try, though; I just think it brought up too many judgment
> calls for how to make single-line comments not look super awkward. I
> imagine it'll cause similar delays for other authors, and exasperated
> sighs when the CI fails due to a 73-column comment.

Enforcing a hard 72 limit in CI would be precisely what PEP 8 does not
want us to do.