This is the name many projects already use for their code-contribution guidelines, but if people here prefer something different, it's trivial to change. For now, it's not included in the tarball (and I think that's appropriate), but adding it there is fine, too. Of course, this is just one small part. Dan Berrange posted a preliminary list a few months ago, describing some aspects of existing practice, and those belong here, too. Jim ----------------------- HACKING: New file: begin to describe contributor/coding guidelines. diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a90addc --- /dev/null +++ b/HACKING @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +Libvirt contributor guidelines +============================== + + +Code indentation +================ +Libvirt's C source code generally adheres to some basic code-formatting +conventions. The existing code base is not totally consistent on this +front, but we do prefer that contributed code be formatted similarly. +In short, use spaces-not-TABs for indentation, use 4 spaces for each +indentation level, and other than that, follow the K&R style. + +If you use Emacs, add the following to one of one of your start-up files +(e.g., ~/.emacs), to help ensure that you get indentation right: + + ;;; When editing C sources in libvirt, use this style. + (defun libvirt-c-mode () + "C mode with adjusted defaults for use with libvirt." + (interactive) + (c-set-style "K&R") + (setq indent-tabs-mode nil) ; indent using spaces, not TABs + (setq c-indent-level 4) + (setq c-basic-offset 4)) + (add-hook 'c-mode-hook + '(lambda () (if (string-match "/libvirt" (buffer-file-name)) + (libvirt-c-mode)))) + +Code formatting (especially for new code) +========================================= +With new code, we can be even more strict. +Please apply the following function (using GNU indent) to any new code. +Note that this also gives you an idea of the type of spacing we prefer +around operators and keywords: + + indent-libvirt() + { + indent -bad -bap -bbb -bli4 -br -ce -brs -cs -i4 -l75 -lc75 \ + -sbi4 -psl -saf -sai -saw -sbi4 -ss -sc -cdw -cli4 -npcs -nbc \ + --no-tabs "$@" + } + +Note that sometimes you'll have to postprocess that output further, by +piping it through "expand -i", since some leading TABs can get through. +Usually they're in macro definitions or strings, and should be converted +anyhow. -- 1.5.5.24.g3cff