SE-0250: Swift Code Style Guidelines and Formatter

Evolution Proposal Reviews
217

SE-0250 Review Adjustment

Hi everyone,

This has been a charged and fractured review conversation. Myself and the rest of the Core Team appreciate how much energy and thought has been poured into this discussion.

The signal from this review and pitch threads, however, has raised questions for me (as review manager) of whether or not the framing of the discussion has been put forth to the community in the optimal way.

Some specific thoughts/concerns:

  1. This discussion is a bit abstract. Some folks (rightly) are concerned on how they can evaluate the idea of having a style guide without having an actual style guide to review.

  2. There should be a broader discussion behind the format tool and its functionality and role. This ties in, however, with the conversation about the style guide itself being too abstract (#1).

  3. Some reviewers commented on the existence of different formatting/linting tools created by the community, and raised some important points:

    A. What would be the benefit/role of having an “official” formatter as part of the Swift project?

    B. What would having an “official” formatter mean for the other tools which may play slightly different or complementary roles for users? Why should swift-format be chosen as the official formatter?

There's a lot going on here, and when combined together these points paint a picture that many members of the community have found it difficult to engage with this discussion, sometimes having conflicting opinions on different pieces of the proposal. It is important that we address this problem, especially given the importance of this overall topic to the community.

For the next step in this conversation, we are going to:

  1. Suspend the review of the proposal as it is framed today.

  2. The Core Team will look on how to re-center the discussion and separate/stage parts of the conversation so that as a community we can all feel we can effectively. The goal is to take into account the feedback and concerns raised in the review thread.

This is not a rejection or approval of what has been put forth in the proposal, but a recognition that the conversation about this important topic needs to be adjusted to allow the community to engage with the topics raised more effectively.

For next steps, my plan is to work with the proposal authors and connect with various folks in the community who raised meta-concerns on this review thread to work out how to continue this discussion. If you would like to provide me specific feedback for working out the path forward for this conversation, please feel free to email me or direct message me on the forums.

I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to Tony Allevato, who has been a patient and active proponent of this conversation.

I also want to again thank everyone who has participated in this discussion. We will be continuing it in the not-so-distant future but in a modified form.

Ted

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