1 * Don't commit directly, instead send your diff to the authors (use
7 When writing libgsf our priorities are
10 2) Maintainable & Documented
11 3) Modular and well designed
16 When you submit code to inclusion in libgsf, or when you modify the sources
17 directly on the Git repository, please keep those things in mind. While
18 performance is important please note that we do not want to hand tune code
19 to shave milliseconds at this point. Well designed algorithms and data
20 strucutures are fertile areas for development, obfuscated code to make a
21 loop 3% faster is not. Specifically, this means:
23 - Clarity of design and function are paramount
24 - Make sure your code does not generate warnings at all.
25 - Please follow the formatting style
30 The formatting style of libgsf is a mix of various styles, make
31 yourself familiar with the GNU coding standards (shipped with most
32 GNU/Linux systems as the standards.info file), then read the Linux
33 kernel coding standards and ignore Linus' jokes. Then look at the
34 Gtk+ header files to get acquainted on how to write nice header files
35 that are almost self documenting.
37 Remember: Use 8 space tabs for indentation: that will keep your
38 code honest as you will be forced to split your routines in more
39 modular chunks (as detailed by Linus).
41 Emacs users can get the default indentation style with this:
43 (setq c-basic-offset 8)
45 On top of that, you will have to:
47 - Follow the Gtk+ cleanliness conventions for function
50 - Follow the Gtk+ namespace convention for function names.
51 module_submodule_operation
53 - Make sure your code does not have a single warning (with the
54 default strong warnings that Gnumeric compiles with) before
55 your code is submitted. (Although we do not advocate -Werror)
57 - Every entry point to a public routine should use the
58 g_return_if_fail and g_return_val_if_fail macros to verify
59 that the parameters passed are valid.
61 - Under no circumstances use magic variables. Use typedef
62 enum { ... } type; to create enumerations. Do not use
63 integers to hold references to enumerations, the compiler
64 can help catch various errors.
66 - Use g_warning to mark spots that need to be reviewed or are
67 not finished to let me fix it eventually.
69 - Do not submit code that is just a temporary workaround for a
70 full fledged feature. i.e. don't submit a quick hack at
71 "search text" which is not designed to be expanded upon. We
72 do not want to maintain limited features. It is better submit an
73 implementation that has been designed to be expanded and enhanced,
74 even if it is not completely finished.
76 - It is more important to be correct than to be fast.
78 - Do not optimize unnecessarily. Do profile, do look for the
79 weak spots before applying "optimization by feeling". This
80 is not a Ouija-based project.
82 - It is more important to keep the code maintainable and
83 readable than to be fast. If you have a great idea about
84 optimizing the code, make sure it is implemented cleanly,
85 that there is a clean and maintainable way to do it:
87 - Fast code that is difficult to maintain has no place in
88 Gnumeric and will be dropped.
90 - Follow the libgsf commenting style, which is not the Gtk
96 All of this is to ensure the libgsf code will be kept within
97 reasonable margins of maintainability for the future: Remember, in two years
98 you will probably be far too busy to maintain your own contributions, and they
99 might become a burden to the program maintainers.
101 libgsf is intended to be a foundation for a various document centric
104 Cleaning code in libgsf is more important than trying not to break
105 existing code. By all means, code clean ups are always welcome.