As we know, the behavior of bitbake has changed in 1.3 so that tabs are not permitted as whitespace in recipes. This will create a lot of consternation when people attempt to upgrade to 1.3. How about a script which scans recipes for tabs? This could be run when a build is running or maybe add a debug mode to help better understand what's going on.
We have a problem here as we're close to release and adding such a script has a variety of problems. These include: a) Knowing when to trigger the script b) Reporting the results back to the user in a variety of UIs c) Potential performance issues of the script We have looked at the errors reported by the tabs issue and found ways to significantly improve those errors as per some other reported bugs. I think adding in the script poses too much risk to the release at this point in the development cycle and is likely to have significant interaction issues with the user. Also, post 1.3, the need for such a script deminises rapidly. I'm therefore marking this as WONTFIX.