Re: What's cooking in git.git (Jan 2017, #02; Sun, 15)

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

Documentation/CodingGuidelines says:

 - We avoid using braces unnecessarily.  I.e.

        if (bla) {
                x = 1;
        }

   is frowned upon.  A gray area is when the statement extends
   over a few lines, and/or you have a lengthy comment atop of
   it.  Also, like in the Linux kernel, if there is a long list
   of "else if" statements, it can make sense to add braces to
   single line blocks.

I think this is pretty clearly the "gray area" mentioned there. Which
yes, does not say "definitely do it this way", but I hope makes it clear
that you're supposed to use judgement about readability.

I always took "gray area" to mean "we do not have strong preference
either way, i.e.

 * It is OK for you to write your new code in either style (the
   usual "match existing style in surrounding code" applies,
   obviously);

 * It is not OK for you to churn the codebase with a patch that only
   changes existing code to flip between the two styles.