On Wed, 27 Dec 2023 at 16:05, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > This has already been debated, and the conclusion was that we would > stick to the existing style for consistency reasons.
I looked through the archives quite a bit, but I couldn't find any conclusive debate about the current declaration style. Definitely not one with "consistency reasons" as being the conclusion. Could you point me to the place where that conclusion was reached? Or could you at least clarify what consistency you believe is lost by removing the warning? The threads discussing this warning that I did find were the following: The initial addition of the warning flag[1], which has very little discussion. Introducing the C99 requirement[2]. Robert and you both preferred the current declaration style. Andrew and Andres both would want to accept the new declaration style. Another where removal of this warning was suggested[3], and where Andres said he was in favor of removing the warning. But he didn't think fighting for it was worth the effort at the time to fight you and Robert, when he was trying to get the general C99 requirement in. And finally, one that was started by me, where I suggest an automated refactor[4]. This change got shot down because it would cause lots of backpatching problems (and because it was using perl regexes instead of an AST parser to do the automated refactor). Ranier and you were proponents of the current declaration style. Chapman was in favor of the new declaration style. Andrew seems neutral. P.S. Note, that I'm not suggesting a complete refactor this time. I'm only proposing to relax the rules, and disable the warning, so newly written code can benefit. But if the only reason not to remove the warning is that then there would be two styles of declaration in the codebase, then I'm happy to create another refactoring script that moves declarations down to their first usage. (Which could then be run on all backbranches to make sure there is no backpatching pain) [1]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/417263F8.4060102%40samurai.com [2]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CA%2BTgmoYvHzFkwChsamwbBrLNJRcRq%2BfyTwveFaN_YOWUsRnfpw%40mail.gmail.com#931f4c68237caf4c60b4dc298236aef1 [3]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/20181213210012.i7iihamlbi7vfdiw%40alap3.anarazel.de#00304f9dfc039da87383fed30be62cff [4]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/AM5PR83MB0178E68E4FF1BAF9C66DF0D1F7C09%40AM5PR83MB0178.EURPRD83.prod.outlook.com