Linux kernel supremo Linus Torvalds has made the use of indents in kernel configuration files more ambiguous – intentionally to weed out inferior parsers.
Linus Torvalds: Talking about RUST and the future of Linux programming
Kernel 6.9-rc4, the latest release candidate for the next version of the Linux kernel, came out yesterday. Among the usual drivers and bug fixes, it includes a few more tweaks for bcachefs, as well as some mitigations against the recently revealed Spectre-style Native Branch History Injection data leaks.
However, the change that made the Reg FOSS desktop the most fun is a configuration file change from Linus himself, titled "Kconfig: add some hidden tabs on purpose." He changed a space indent to a tab indent to catch poor quality parsers.
Specifically, in this block of text in the core source…
