flocks.dev

On code indentation

2026-03-04T00:00:00.000Z

I've always considered debates about code indentation silly and pointless. For me it was only a matter of taste. I had no strong opinion on it and would adapt to the project convention I'm working on. And for personal project, I would simply rely on default style convention of tools such as prettier, that automatically formats code.

But recently, I stumbled upon a code formating convention in some C projects where the definition of function would follow this pattern

type_of_return
name_of_function(args....)

So you would have first the return type, and then on a newline, the name of the function.

At first, I didn't really like it. No strong argument, only aesthetics.

But then I realized how powerful it is. Now without any LSP, or any fancy IDE features, you can quickly find any function declaration by assuming it will be on a line starting with the function name.

So it's just a matter of doing:

grep -rn ^function_name

Now, I wonder if there is any other formatting conventions that favor code discovery with simple and ubiquitous tools like grep!

Using git bare repository

2025-12-21T00:00:00.000Z

This is nothing revolutionnary but it's worth reminding that if you already own a VPS, or any server, and you need to create private git repository, you don't need to use github or any equivalent platform.

Sometimes, you work on a side project that is intended to remain private. You still want git history, for obvious reason, and you still want to be able to clone the repo and work from multiple PC.

If you already own a VPS, or any kind of server, that is accessible via SSH and git is installed there, you already own a GIT server.

You just need to init a bare repo with

git init --bare .

And that's it!

On your PC, just config the remote so it points to your server.

git remote add origin username@URL-SERVER:~/path/to/repo

Sharing code snippets on IRC with Emacs

2025-10-19T00:00:00.000Z

I like to use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) because it's a text only protocol and it's relaxing in the age of social networks full of images/videos and all sort of distractions.

But sharing code is not really convenient because IRC is a "line-based" medium: every new line becomes a new message.

So the way people do that is by sharing URL of pastebin or equivalent.

Here are 2 little elisp functions that I use everytime I want to share some code snippets.

(defun ft--upload-file (file)
  (let* ((hostname "https://envs.sh")
         (upload-command (format "curl -s -F'file=@%s' %s" (expand-file-name file) hostname))
         (url (shell-command-to-string upload-command)))
    (kill-new url)
    (message "%s" url)))

(defun ft-share-region (begin end)
  "Take region and upload the text to 0x0.st or equivalent"
  (interactive "r")
  (when (not (use-region-p))
    (user-error "No region selected"))
  (let* ((text (buffer-substring-no-properties begin end))
         (file-text (make-temp-file "" nil ".txt" text)))
    (ft--upload-file file-text)))

(defun ft-share-file (file)
  "Take marked file and upload it to 0x0.st. Prompt for file if no marked file"
  (interactive (list
                (let ((files-marked (dired-get-marked-files)))
                  (if (= (length files-marked) 1)
                      (car files-marked)
                    (read-file-name "File to upload: ")))))
  (ft--upload-file file))

I can either directly select a region (ft-share-region), or I can directly send the content of a file (ft-share-file). It will copy in my kill ring the URL, and will also display it in the echo area, so I have a little nice feedback it worked.

Obviously, ft-share-file will work with every kind of files. I also regularly use it to share screenshots, or even GIFs. Since Emacs web browser, eww, is totally able to display images (even GIF), providing you run emacs in graphical mode, this provides a fully integrated experience.

ft-share-file could be improved, and it could accept multiple files. It could also take the content of the file and render it in HTML inside a <pre> tag, so Emacs browser could apply syntax highlighting. But honestly, I never need the former, and I'm too lazy for the latter.