Tabs are replaced with spaces in Makefile

[asbjornu]

As mentioned in atom/language-make#3, I'm having problems with tabs being replaced with spaces in a Makefile. As this causes the Makefile to stop working, it's a rather big problem. I've identified the tabs-to-spaces package as the perpetrator. I've tried to adjust my configuration to:

"*":
  "tabs-to-spaces":
    "onSave": "untabify"
"Makefile":
  "tabs-to-spaces":
    "onSave": "tabify"

But the "Makefile" section seems to be ignored. Tabs are still replaced with spaces in my Makefile. Is my configuration invalid?

[lee-dohm]

Yes, your configuration is invalid. In order to manually add language-specific configuration, also called scope-specific configuration, you need the "scope name" of the language you want to configure. In this case, the scope name for Makefiles is .source.makefile. This information can be found in the settings page for the language package in question:

If you change your configuration to look like this:

"*":
  "tabs-to-spaces":
    "onSave": "untabify"
".source.makefile":
  "tabs-to-spaces":
    "onSave": "tabify"

it should work. Let me know if that doesn't help!

[asbjornu]

@lee-dohm Awesome, that did indeed do the trick! I've never seen that "Scope" before. Thanks for pointing it out! It's almost as I feel like "tabs-to-spaces" should add the untabify configuration for Makefiles by default, or at least mention it in the documentation. Thoughts?

On to something else, I noticed that tabs within a line, to align something like Markdown references, aren't replaced. Such as:

[edit]:             https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
[github]:           https://github.com/signup/free

Is that intentional, so "tabs-to-spaces" should only replace indentation at the start of the line?

[lee-dohm]

I feel like "tabs-to-spaces" should add the untabify configuration for Makefiles by default, or at least mention it in the documentation. Thoughts?

I specifically default onSave to off so that people can configure it how they like themselves. If I mentioned Makefiles in the documentation, it would create implicit expectations for me to warn of any special exceptions. I'm not sure I want to take on the maintenance burden. I'll consider it though.

"tabs-to-spaces" should only replace indentation at the start of the line?

Yes, the tabs-to-spaces package was designed specifically for altering leading indentation. Atom itself has commands for converting all indentation on a line.

[asbjornu]

@lee-dohm Thanks!

[flying-sheep]

actually you should probably just hardcode this for makefiles.

space-indented makefiles are always wrong, and it’s easy to configure your package in a way that makes this bug appear.

[lee-dohm]

actually you should probably just hardcode this for makefiles.

As I said above, the onSave functionality defaults to off. This complies with the common "safe by default" axiom. If people want to change from the default configuration then it is up to them to understand their own requirements and set their configuration accordingly. I'm not going to force a setting which can have significant performance implications to on.

[flying-sheep]

I'm not going to force a setting which can have significant performance implications to on.

why do you assume this might be the case?

[lee-dohm]

why do you assume this might be the case?

Why do you assume and imply that the author of the package doesn't know the performance characteristics of their own creation?

[flying-sheep]

because having intuition about performance of complex software is hard 😄

but yeah, you don’t want that, and i don’t use this plugin so i don’t need to lobby for adding the feature 😉

[lee-dohm]

Yes, but making decisions based on data is much, much easier 😀