Re: [PATCH v2 00/14] new git check-ignore sub-command

Adam Spiers [off-list ref] writes:

Sure, I can do that, but shouldn't this convention be documented in
SubmittingPatches?

People must have learned this by imitating what senior contributors
send to the list, but the "[Subject] area: title" thing does not
appear in that document.  I agree it should (patches welcome).

quoted

I saw quite a few decl-after-statement in new code.  Please fix
them.

Again, I can do that no problem, but again this convention is
undocumented and I am not psychic.

Yeah, when there is no code that does decl-after-statement, with the
"imitate surrounding code" rule alone, I agree that it is a bit hard
to tell we do not allow it (as opposed to seeing a construct is
often used and assuming that the construct is permitted, which is
much easier).

I see that a patch was provided
5 years ago to document this, but was apparently never pulled in:

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/47843/focus=48015

I just read SubmittingPatches again and looked for 1a as found in
that patch, and it is there.

I also see in the same thread that a patch to add
-Wdeclaration-after-statement to CFLAGS was also offered but never
pulled in,

There is no guarantee your CC would understand it; you don't even
know if it is a gcc in the first place.

I'm also curious to know why this convention exists.  Are people
really still compiling git with compilers which don't support C99?

See 6d62c98 (Makefile: Change the default compiler from "gcc" to
"cc", 2011-12-20).