Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] Document preferred naming conventions

This documents the preferred conventions for naming files, structs, enums, typedefs and functions. Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; --- HACKING | 71 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ docs/hacking.html.in | 83 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ docs/hacking2.xsl | 4 +++ 3 files changed, 158 insertions(+) diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING index fff003b..16be5cf 100644 --- a/HACKING +++ b/HACKING @@ -239,6 +239,77 @@ on the subject, on Richard Jones' guide to working with open source projects <http://people.redhat.com/rjones/how-to-supply-code-to-open-source-project...;. +Naming conventions +================== +When reading libvirt code, a number of different naming conventions will be +evident due to various changes in thinking over the course of the project's +lifetime. The conventions documented below should be followed when creating +any entirely new files in libvirt. When working on existing files, while it is +desirable to apply these conventions, keeping a consistent style with existing +code in that particular file is generally more important. The overall guiding +rule is that every file, enum, struct, function, and typedef name must have a +'vir' or 'VIR' prefix. All local scope variable names are exempt, and global +variables are exempt, unless exported in a header file. + +*File names* + +File naming varies depending on the subdirectory. The preferred style is to +have a 'vir' prefix, followed by a name which matches the name of the +functions / objects inside the file. For example, a file containing an object +'virHashtable' is stored in files 'virhashtable.c' and 'virhashtable.h'. +Sometimes, methods which would otherwise be declared 'static' need to be +exported for use by a test suite. For this purpose a second header file should +be added with a suffix of 'priv'. e.g. 'virhashtablepriv.h'. USe of +underscores in file names is discouraged when using the 'vir' prefix style. +The 'vir' prefix naming applies to src/util, src/rpc and tests/ directories. +Most other directories do not follow this convention. +