Re: [PATCH] Add pyramid style rule to CONTRIBUTING.md

On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 10:28 AM Stefano Brivio wrote:

On Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:40:10 +1100 David Gibson wrote:

...

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 12:30:54PM +0800, Yumei Huang wrote:

...

Also fix the copyright line.

Suggested-by: Stefano Brivio Signed-off-by: Yumei Huang

Stefano, do we actually encourage that style for any "list of similar items"? Or just for local variable declarations?

Just for local variable declarations, thanks for noticing.

I was rather focusing on the fact (https://lwn.net/Articles/758552/) that it's actually called "Reverse Christmas tree", not pyramid style.

I can't find a convenient reference right now, maybe it's hidden somewhere in https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/?q=reverse+christmas+tree, ...or maybe it's actually "documented" in checkpatch.pl?

I found it in Documentation/process/maintainer-kvm-x86.rst as below: " Using reverse fir tree, a.k.a. reverse Christmas tree or reverse XMAS tree, for variable declarations isn't strictly required, though it is still preferred. " I will update the name and make it only for local variable declarations. Do I need to update the reference link as well? The name would be different from the current pyramids link (https://hisham.hm/2018/06/16/when-listing-repeated-things-make-pyramids/). Not sure if it would be a little bit confusing if not.

Or prehaps just trust us/me on that, sorry, I know it's not ideal :( ...but I can absolutely guarantee it's called Reverse Christmas tree.

-- Stefano

-- Thanks, Yumei Huang