An exchange on the dev mailing list recently highlighted the difficulties of having a strict coding style...

Sure, I could have changed one variable name, send the patch again, get the same comment again, change another variable name, send patch again, get the same comment again, change yet another variable name, send the patch again,...

You see, trial-and-error with changing styling things is boring.

The root problem here is that the sender of this message codes for the Windows using Windows conventions. Subversions style is rooted in the Unix world. So what's the big deal? Naming conventions. Windows (expecially C++) coders tend to use Microsoft's hungarian notation for variables, the Subversion standard doesn't use hungarian notation. Windows coders often delimit words in variable names using capitalisation (easyNow), Subversion style uses underscores (easy_now).

But what provoked the above response was whether or not to use the Windows macro WINAPI. In order to strip the code of anything Windows like this had been replaced by __stdcall which is what the macro expands to.

The Subversion coding standards are necessary, but I do think that new and infrequent contributors would be more constructively helped if the person reviewing the code were to make the required stylistic changes and repost the patch themselves. Yes, I know it's a bore for the reviewer, but it would be far more efficient.