Linux: Moving and Changing Code
In response to a recent merge request, Linus Torvalds explained a best practice when moving and changing code, "when doing renames it is generally *much* nicer to do a 100% rename (perhaps with just _trivial_ changes to make it compile - the include statements etc change, and maybe you want to change the name in the comment header too)."
He went on to explain, "doing 'move the code and change it at the same time' is considered bad form. Movement diffs are much harder to read anyway (a traditional diff will show it as a new-file + delete, of course), so the general rule is: move code around _without_ modifying it, so that code movement (whether it's a whole file, or just a set of functions between files) doesn't really introduce any real changes, and is easier to look through the changes; do the actual changes to the code as a separate thing." He went on to note why this is especially important during Linux development, "where patches are the main way people communicate."
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