quoted

Why do various software developers bother about coding style specifications
at all then?

Coding style is important,

Thanks that you "dare" to express also such an opinion.

but patches that just fix coding style are a bad thing

When you find such a change opportunity so "bad", are there any circumstances
left over where you would dare to touch the corresponding source code line.

because they break things like `git blame`

I follow your concern to some degree.

But can this argument evolve against a lot of changes generally?

and run the risk of introducing new bugs

Did this really "happen" because of an update suggestion for this software module?

without any net benefit to end users.

Can the proposed adjustment help to make a function like "setup_conf"
a bit more robust (together with related update steps) so that an improved
coding style compliance will hopefully influence the error probability
in positive ways?

This goes double for code you don't actually work on regularly
or don't completely understand.

How does such a kind of general feedback fit to the shown change
possibilities in this patch series?

Do you reject this update step?

Regards,
Markus