Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > But with Coccinelle, it's a lot easier to apply the change tree-wide, and > to convert topics in flight as they get merged. The maintainer still > gets conflicts with topics-in-flight that touch converted areas, though. > So I'd be curious to hear if Junio's opinion has changed at all. There are two distinct kinds of cost on such a tree-wide change. Conflicts with in-flight topic cannot be avoided other than truly avoiding, i.e. refraining from touching the areas in flux, but it is primarily what the maintainer does, and with help with rerere it can be reasonably well automated ;-) But the cost of reviewing could become a lot smaller when our tools are trustworthy. As long as we can be reasonably certain that the tree-wide change patch does one thing it is intended to do and nothing else (e.g. comes with mechanical reproduction recipe that allows the patch to be independently audited), I do not have much problem with such a clean-up. The "avoid tree-wide change" rule still applies for things that allows a lot of subjective judgment and discretion. I do not know of a good way to reduce reviewer costs on those kind of changes. Thanks.
