What does "nit" mean in hacker-speak? [closed]

Question

When someone writes "nit: removed whitespace" on a commit, what does "nit" mean? I've also seen it capitalized as if it were an abbreviation (i.e. NIT). For an example usage see this post:

Of course there is a difference between a comment saying: "Nit: Trailing whitespace" and "According to Section V, Subsection VII of the Coding Manual you should never add trailing whitespace. Please see that you don't." or some stuff like that. The latter is a passive-aggressive potshot, the former IMO is just a quick reminder.

Other example from "Chromium Code Reviews":

Issue 9662: fix minor style nit (Closed)

EDIT: And an answer comes from Bugzilla's review page:

Sometimes the reviewer will prefix his comments with "Nit:". This means that he's just "nitpicking"--you don't have to fix these points, but we'd like you to.

Deonnadeonne

A "nit" means a trivial item. If it's in caps, it may be an acronym. It depends upon context. – Wakeless

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is not a programming problem but a dictionary one. – Nosy

Answer 1

In the context of "nit: removed whitespace," I would assume that the term is short for nit-pick. That is, a small change that may not be very important, but is technically correct.

Carmella

Answer 2

It is short for "nit pick". Pretty sure.

Candracandy

Answer 3

Technically, it means "a louse egg" - in context it indicates "a very small detail".

Bluefish

Answer 4

NIT in this context means nit pick. Its generally used for small change requests and suggestions.

for more details you may refer to https://www.chromium.org/glossary

Denis

Answer 5

The act of removing nits. Very small nonfunctional things. e.g. format, coding style, etc.

Belligerency

Answer 6

shorthand for NIT : (N)ot (I)mportant, (T)hough

Hamrick

I like this, even if I think this is not etymologically correct. – Neary