[darcs-users] darcs patch: minor refator to get_extra improve comments

[Trent W. Buck]

"David Roundy" <daveroundy at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 2:12 AM, Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> writes:
>>>> Mon Aug 25 10:01:11 PDT 2008  Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com>
>>>>   * minor refator to get_extra improve comments
>>>
>>> Has automatic spell-checking of patch comments been discussed?
>>
>> Unfortunately I type the patch names on the command line, so I'm not
>> sure how I'd spell check that.
>
> We could do it with a pre-hook, or possibly even in the test (checking
> an appropriate environment variable).  But the problem is that I'd
> guess that a spell-checker would give many false positives, since
> we're likely to discuss things like functions and modules (and
> "darcs") in the comments, which won't be in the dictionary.  Of
> course, we could put a custom dictionary in our repository, or the
> spell checker could be instructed to treat the entirety of darcs'
> source code as a dictionary.   The latter option won't catch coders
> who are chronic misspellers, who put misspellings even into their
> commented code.  But it would have the advantage of potentially being
> lower-maintenance than creating a custom dictionary.
>
> In other words, it's an interesting idea, but I"m not sure that it'd
> be valuable.  I'd be happy to see a patch implementing this, though.
> :)

I think the way lintian does it, rather than listing ANYTHING that isn't
in its word list, is to raise a warning for "common" typos.  For
example, it would complain about "tyop" but not "foomble", even though
neither are words.

Thus, you'd get lots of false negatives, but fewer than you get right
now with no spell-checking.