unrealircd

- supernets unrealircd source & configuration

git clone git://git.acid.vegas/unrealircd.git

coding-guidelines (5760B)

1 Rules about patches & modifications to UnrealIRCd
2
3 1. When making a change, always add a small description in the commit log.
4 Don't forget to mention the bug# and credit the reporter (if any).
5
6 2. If new files are made, they must contain proper copyright headers.
7
8 3. Each bug or feature should have a bug# so people can have a discussion
9 about it. This has a few implications (read!!):
10 * People must report bugs/feature requests to bugs.unrealircd.org and
11 not on IRC, e-mail, etc.
12 * That means other people can see the bug# and comment on it. This means
13 discussion is easy to read back for each issue and not spread between
14 several IRC logs.
15 Furthermore, by using the bugtracker instead of directly committing,
16 people could point out that there might be a better way to do things
17 than you originally thought, or it might be that other devs don't like
18 it at all.
19 * If a head coder has 'acknowledged' or 'confirmed' the issue or stated
20 in a comment that it's OK to implement, then any dev may take the issue.
21 The dev should change the status to 'assigned' and work on it, then
22 commit and change it to 'resolved', set 'fixed in version' to the
23 correct release, and add a comment pasting the relevant commit log.
24 Of course other guidelines, in particular rule #7, still applies.
25
26 4. If you don't have direct write access to the repository then you can
27 submit changes as as PR on github. It is very much preferred to also
28 have a bugs.unrealircd.org entry for it as well (see previous item).
29
30 5. For the stable branch, in general, only commit changes that have an
31 associated bugid# and/or were discussed.
32 For branches currently in development (alpha/beta) there's more freedom
33 and if you think the change will be small and is fine without a
34 discussion then feel free to commit.
35
36 6. Regarding reidenting, restructuring or other major code cleanups: please
37 discuss before doing so. The other devs might not agree with you on the
38 particular cleanup you have in mind which would result in another
39 clean-up-the-cleanup commit.
40 You may, however reindent and clean up individual sections when you are
41 working on fixing a particular bug# or implementing a new feature. In fact
42 you're encouraged to do so if the code is confusing without it. However,
43 obey the style of Unreal's code (mostly outlined in this document)
44 and do not introduce yet another (new) style. Also, be careful with doing
45 any cleanup: if you're unsure in any way about the use of something,
46 or something that looks redundant on first sight, then look more
47 carefully... it might indeed be useless and/or redundant, but it might
48 also be a subtle thing that can create great bugs when 'cleaned up'.
49
50 7. During the Release Candidate stage (from RC1 until the final release)
51 only the head coder may commit directly, all others should ask and
52 present their patch before committing. Yes, even if you are changing
53 only 1 line of code or text.
54
55 9. UnrealIRCd should compile on all supported operating systems and
56 platforms, using GCC 3 or higher on *NIX, and Visual Studio 2008 or
57 higher on Windows. This means you cannot blindly use all C99 extensions.
58
59 10. Coders must test their code before committing.
60
61 11. /*
62 * These kind of comments
63 */
64
65 NOT
66
67 // These kind of comments
68
69 12. if (something == 1)
70 {
71 moo; /* comment */
72 /* This does what what what */
73 cow(go(moo));
74 }
75
76 NOT
77
78 if (something == 1) {
79 }
80
81 13. Do not touch version.c.SH or version.h, unless you are a head coder.
82 If you need a credit in, contact us
83
84 14. Protocol changes must be discussed before making patches for it.
85
86 15. We do NOT rip people off. If we use other people's code, it MUST be
87 properly credited.
88
89 16. We use tabsize 8 and we use tabs AND NOT SPACES.
90 Some code is old and horrible and has a mix of tabs and spaces used for
91 spacing, that's something we do not want to have ;)
92
93 17. Be careful about overflows. Do not do any unchecked string copies.
94 Instead of strcpy, strcat and sprintf/ircsprintf, use the following
95 functions: strlcpy, strlcat, snprintf/ircnsprintf.
96 If you are copying/writing character-by-character or word-by-word in a
97 loop, eg using *p++ = x; then be very sure about your size counting.
98 Often it's better to avoid such code altogether, by simply using
99 strlcat for everything.
100
101 18. Speed. When optimizing or writing code, keep in mind that readability and
102 stability comes FIRST, and after that comes speed. So we'd rather prefer some
103 readable code (even if difficult) over some odd highly optimized routine which
104 nobody understands, is difficult to extend, and might have several bugs.
105 As mentioned earlier: use ircsnprintf, not snprintf (this is because
106 ircsnprintf is optimized for simple strings like the ones we use).
107 ircsnprintf calls snprintf when it finds a (non-simple) format specifier it
108 can't handle. Simple format specifiers do not have prefixes other than
109 h and l.
110
111 19. Initialize your structs and use the proper memory calls.
112 In UnrealIRCd we use safe_alloc, safe_free, safe_strdup and safe_strldup.
113 Do NOT use malloc, calloc or strdup.
114
115 20. Comment your code! This should speak for itself...
116 Put comments wherever you think they are needed, to aid any further coders
117 with reading your code.. and, in fact, it will aid yourself as well if you
118 would look back at your code 2 years later.
119 If there's some obscure pitfall, DO mention it! Don't just "hope" a next
120 author will see it like you did.
121
122 21. Use enums whenever possible, rather than #define constants. Besides making
123 things more clean, it also aids debugging.