source: trunk/doc/standards @ 9541

This document describes guidelines for code which is to be
incorporated into the Athena source tree.  Here are the areas covered:

        Conventions for C code
        Conventions for shell scripts
        Software engineering practices
        Symbol namespaces
        Portability considerations for code we maintain
        Portability considerations for code we release
        Portability considerations for code we get from third parties

Conventions for C code
----------------------

If you are working on an existing module which does not follow these
conventions, be consistent with the existent source code rather than
these conventions.

You should follow the section on "Writing C" in the Gnu coding
standards (available in emacs info under "standards"), with the
following changes:

        * When making a function call, do not put a space before the
          open parenthesis.  Do put spaces before the open parenthesis
          after "while", "if", or "for", though.

        * When defining a function, do not drop to the next line for
          the name of the function; put the function name on the same
          line as the return type.

        * Don't insert formfeed characters into source files to divide
          programs into pages.

        * Ignore the sections on "Portability between System Types"
          and "Portability between CPUs"; see the sections on
          portability in this file instead.  Also ignore the section
          on "Internationalization."

        * In the section "Calling System Functions," ignore everything
          about string functions.  These days you can assume that
          using "#include <string.h>", strchr(), and strrchr() will
          work on just about all platforms.

You can use "M-x set-c-style" "GNU" in emacs to have emacs take care
of the gnu-style indentation for you.  Remember to drop to the next
line before each open brace.

When writing return statements, do not put parentheses around the
return value; just write "return foo;".  This convention is not
specified in the Gnu coding standards, but is consistent with the
examples in the standards.

Each C source file should begin with an MIT copyright statement, a
comment describing what the file does, and a line:

        static char rcsid[] = "$Id$";

Each C header file should begin with:

        /* $Id$ */

followed by an MIT copyright statement and a comment describing what
the file does.  MIT copyright statements may be omitted for source
code which is not distributed outside of MIT.

The preferred convention for comments is

        /* comment text */

for one line comments, and

        /* comment text line 1
         * comment text line 2
         */

for multi-line comments.  As recommended in the Gnu coding standards,
your comments should normally be complete, capitalized sentences
ending with a period.

Write prototypes for all of your functions.  Include argument names in
your prototypes, to help the reader understand what they mean.

Conventions for shell scripts
-----------------------------

Use /bin/sh to write shell scripts, not csh.

Begin each shell script with:

        #!/bin/sh
        # $Id$

followed by an MIT copyright if the shell script will be distributed
outside of MIT.

Use tabs for indentation.  Avoid putting the then or else clauses of
an if statement on the same line.  Avoid creating lines longer than 79
characters.  Write case statements according to the format:

        case expression in
        pattern)
                statements
                ;;
        esac

Environment variable names should be in all capitals; shell variable
names should be in all lowercase.  Avoid writing ${varname} for
variable expansion except when necessary; just write $varname.  In
most cases, if you intend to expand a variable as a single word, you
should write "$varname" with double quotes.

Software engineering practices
------------------------------

The following software engineering practices are strongly encouraged:

        * Restricting the operations which can access a given type of
          data object, and grouping them together.  (This is called
          "encapsulation" and is considered one of the important
          aspects of "object-oriented programming.")

        * Documenting data invariants (i.e. conditions on the
          representations of data objects which are assumed to always
          be true) and the meaning of data representations.

        * Documenting non-obvious requirements and effects of
          procedures.

        * Use of prototypes for all functions.

        * Automated testing of both program components ("unit
          testing") and whole programs ("integration testing").

The following software engineering practices are discouraged:

        * Use of global variables.  Remember that the complexity of
          any function's interface is increased by the global
          variables it uses, even if that doesn't show up in the
          function prototype.  Global variables are marginally
          acceptable to represent configuration parameters determined
          by command-line arguments or a configuration file, but even
          then it is preferrable to find an alternative.

        * Use of global process state.  You should avoid using
          alarm(), and you should avoid using getuid() or getenv()
          inside libraries or other "deep" interfaces.  Code that uses
          global process state tends to interact poorly with other
          code in large programs.

Symbol namespaces
-----------------

If you are writing a library, you should pick a prefix for your
library.  You should ensure that all symbols which interact with the
application's namespace (both at link time and on inclusion of the
header file) begin with your prefix (or the all-caps form of your
prefix, in the case of preprocessor symbols and enumeration constants)
followed by an underscore.  Symbols which are not intended for use by
the application should begin with your preefix followed by two
underscores.

For instance, if your prefix is "hes", then functions exported to the
user should begin with "hes_" (e.g. "hes_resolve").  Functions used
internally by the library should begin with "hes__"
(e.g. "hes__resolve" for the internal resolver function).
Preprocessor symbols intended for use by the application should begin
with "HES_" (e.g. "HES_ER_OK"); preprocessor symbols not intended for
use by the application should begin with "HES__" (e.g.
"HES__HESIOD_H", used to protect hesiod.h from multiple
inclusion).

Names of structures should begin with your prefix, but structure
fields don't need to.  Strictly speaking, structure fields interact
with the user's namespace because the user might have "#define"'d them
to something before including your header file, but applications
generally shouldn't be "#define"ing lots of lowercase symbols, so this
is not a real worry.

Portability considerations for code we maintain
-----------------------------------------------

In general, your code should assume a POSIX-compliant and ANSI
C-compliant development environment.

Sometimes our platforms may have bugs in POSIX interfaces but not in
BSD interfaces (e.g. under Ultrix 4.2, setpgid() works but setsid()
does not).  See the file "lossage" in this directory for descriptions
of particular bugs and incompatibilities and how to handle them.

Some important operations (especially in code in the Athena
environment) are not covered by the ANSI C or POSIX specifications.
See the file "nonstd" in this directory for descriptions of how to
handle some of them.

In general, you should use Autoconf to handle portability concerns;
see the file "build-system" in this directory for how a package in the
athena hierarchy should use autoconf.  If you must perform an
operating system test (because you are using a plain Makefile,
typically for something in the packs hierarchy), do it in two steps;
for instance:

        #define HAVE_STRERROR
        #if defined(sun) && !defined(SOLARIS)
        /* SunOS 4.1.3_U1 doesn't have strerror().  Use sys_errlist
         * instead. */
        #undef HAVE_STRERROR
        #endif

        #ifndef HAVE_STRERROR
        extern const char *const sys_errlist[];
        #define strerror(x) (sys_errlist[x])
        #endif

This way, if the source tree is ever converted to use feature tests,
the person porting the code will know exactly what needs to be tested
for.  If you can anticipate the preprocessor symbol which would be
used with Autoconf (as in this example), that's even better.  Note
particularly the comment instead the operating system test; it should
specify:

        * What special consideration is needed for that operating
          system.

        * The version number of the operating system for which this
          approach was determined to be necessary.

This will help future maintainers determine if one can eliminate the
special consideration altogether when an OS upgrade has happened.

Following is a list of appropriate preprocessor symbols to use to
detect platforms we care about, when using plain Makefiles:

        SunOS:          #if defined(sun) && !defined(SOLARIS)
        Solaris:        #ifdef SOLARIS
        IRIX            #ifdef sgi
        Linux:          #ifdef linux
        NetBSD:         #ifdef __NetBSD__
                        or #include <sys/param.h> and #ifdef BSD4_4
                        if applicable to all BSD 4.4 systems.

SOLARIS is not automatically defined by the compiler on Solaris
systems; we make sure it's defined when we build code not using
autoconf.  There are no reliable automatically defined constants for
Solaris systems.

For some highly nonportable operations you may need to do a platform
test even when using Autoconf.  In that case, use AC_CANONICAL_HOST
rather than the above ifdefs.

Portability considerations for code we release
----------------------------------------------

All of the standards in the previous section apply; however, we
generally care about more platforms for code we release to the outside
works.  It is discouraged, but acceptable, to care about platforms
which are not POSIX-compliant.  Code that cares about such platforms
should determine whether the platform supports POSIX interfaces by
using AC_CHECK_HEADERS(unistd.h) to determine whether it can #include
<unistd.h>, and then checking whether _POSIX_VERSION is defined.  Such
code should always use POSIX interfaces rather than less portable
interfaces when they are available.

Portability considerations for code we get from third parties
-------------------------------------------------------------

The overriding principle for code obtained from third parties is to
make as few changes as possible.  A lot of third-party code has a very
bad approach to portability, or cares about a lot of platforms we
don't care about.  You should attempt to follow the portability
approach used by the rest of the program, such as it may be.  Ideally,
any changes you make should be made in such a manner that they can be
incorporated into the source tree maintained by the third party.