Re: ID-nits

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:
> >>>>> Wijnen, Bert (Bert) writes:
> 
> >> I'd like to suggest a formatting change too, so that it would read:
> >> 
> >> * All MIBs should compile cleanly using 
> >>   "smilint -m -s -l 9 -i namelength-32"
> 
> Please replace "-l 9" with "-l 6" since this is the maximum warning
> level that actually exists. By being precise that "-l 6" is what the
> IETF likes, we will have the freedom to add another level 7 at some
> later point in time which generates warnings the IETF does not care
> about. For example, we could simply assign the name length warnings
> to the new level 7.

Such as the "differs only in case" warning?

On 18 Feb 2003, Frank Strauss wrote:
> >>> I'd like to suggest a formatting change too, so that it would read:
> >>> 
> >>> * All MIBs should compile cleanly using 
> >>> "smilint -m -s -l 9 -i namelength-32"
> 
> Juergen> Please replace "-l 9" with "-l 6" since this is the maximum warning
> Juergen> level that actually exists. [...]
> 
> I also changed the default for the smilint@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de mail robot
> to "-l 6".

OK, I'll put this in the -01 guidelines draft.  Fortunately I have
not yet submitted it, as I'm still preparing the changelog and open
issues list.

//cmh

P.S.  Just for the record, I note that this request was made once
before and turned down ... it would have been helpful to have the
explanation then ... but better late than never, I guess.

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, C. M. Heard wrote:
> > 14. Appendix B:
> > 
> >     You can simplify your smilint examples to the following:
> > 
> >     smilint -l 6 -i namelen-32 <module>
> 
> The recommended command line has been changed to
> 
> smilint -m -s -l 9 -s -i namelength-32 <module>
> 
> Note the "-l 9" and not "-l 6" ... except for the 32-character
> name stuff all warnings should be examined.  In most cases any
> warnings that appear SHOULD be fixed, although there are
> legitimate exceptions in certain cases.  I think Bert, at least,
> agrees with this: in the recent discussion on the instructions
> in http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html he stated:
> 
>    "In fact I like it if people use -l 9 to check their MIB
>    Modules.  They should look at the warnings and evaluate if
>    they are serious or not.  Sometimes they are not serious and
>    easily fixable too ... so it would not hurt to just fix it."
> 
> This command line is the default for the smilint e-mail service
> (which the appendix also mentions) so I guess that Frank agrees
> with this too.