DISCLAIMER: This is not my personal idea, but a community discussion from some time ago. Don't kill the messenger.
In March we were discussing issues with heterogeneity of the code [1]. The summary is that we had a consensus to enforce a stricter code style on our Java code base in order to make it easier to switch between projects and to have clear rules for new contributions. The main proposal in the last discussion was to go with Google's Java code style. Not all were fully satisfied with this, but still everyone agreed on some kind of style. I think the upcoming 0.10 release is a good point to finally go through with these changes (right after the release/branch-off). I propose to go with Google's Java code style [2] as proposed earlier. PROs: - Clear style guide available - Tooling like checkstyle rules, IDE plugins already available CONs: - Fully breaks our current style The main problem with this will be open pull requests, which will be harder to merge after all the changes. On the other hand, should pull requests that have been open for a long time block this? Most of the important changes will be merged for the release anyways. I think in the long run we will gain more than we loose by this (more homogenous code, clear rules). And it is questionable whether we will ever be able to do such a change in the future if we cannot do it now. The project will most likely grow and attract more contributors, at which point it will be even harder to do. Please make sure to answer the following points in the discussion: 1) Are you (still) in favour of enforcing stricter rules on the Java codebase? 2) If yes, would you be OK with the Google's Java code style? – Ufuk [1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/flink-dev/201503.mbox/%3ccanc1h_von0b5omnwzxchtyzwhakeghbzvquyk7s9o2a36b8...@mail.gmail.com%3e [2] https://google.github.io/styleguide/javaguide.html
