OpenSSL Communities
Thu 23 Oct 2025 2:38PM

Feedback on change in source code style

BF Barry Fussell Public Seen by 42

During the OpenSSL conference a change in source code style was proposed.

One the main purposes of this change was to improve the PR process.

The slides from the presentation are here:

https://2025.openssl-conference.org/speaker-sessions/detail-195_1292952#sectionLink

Please share any question, comments, concerns here so we can share with the larger foundation TAC team.

DJL

Dimitri John Ledkov (Chainguard) Thu 23 Oct 2025 2:59PM

Please apply it atomically, to the whole code base, and all supported version streams as far as possible. For example:

  • master

  • 3.6 branch

  • 3.5 branch

Because the benefit of unified style format only works, if cherrypicks are working. The benefit diminishes the further back in time one goes. Thus ideally unified formatting should be applied to master, 3.6 and 3.5.

Yes there were will be immediate short term pain, but it will be bliss for the next 5 years for everyone.

MK

Matthias Kraft Fri 24 Oct 2025 6:37AM

My 2 cents: The code base is large, the developers are few, you need to automate as much as possible. If reformatting helps to ease the processes, do it.

WL

Watson Ladd Fri 24 Oct 2025 5:28PM

I strongly support doing this, and agree it should be done everywhere at once.

DB

Dmitry Belyavsky Fri 24 Oct 2025 6:18PM

We need some scripting to rebase our patches (we have plenty of them)