unrealircd/doc/coding-guidelines

Rules about patches & modifications to UnrealIRCd

1. When making a change, always add a small description in Changes, in the
   BOTTOM. Don't forget to mention the bug# and credit the reporter (if any).

2. If new files are made, it must contain proper copyright headers.

3. If you want to submit patches (f.e. if you don't have CVS write access)
   then submit them to http://bugs.unrealircd.org/ (shortly called bugs*)
   using "cvs diff -u > patchname". A submission must contain description of
   what it does, etc.

4. Each bug or feature should have a bug# so people can have a discussion
   about it. This has a few implications (read!!):
   * People must report bugs/feature requests to bugs* and not on
     IRC, e-mail, etc.
   * That means other people can see the bug# and comment on it. This means
     discussion is easy to read back for each issue and not spread between
     several IRC logs.
     Furthermore, by using the bugtracker instead of directly committing,
     people could point out that there might be a better way to do things
     than you originally thought, or it might be that other devs don't like
     it at all.
   * If a head coder has 'acknowledged' or 'confirmed' the bug or stated in
     a comment that it's OK to implement, then a dev may take the issue.
     The dev should change the status to 'assigned' and work on it, then
     commit and change it to 'resolved', set 'fixed in version' to next
     release, and add a comment pasting the relevant Changelog item and the
     releaseid (.XYZ).
     Of course other guidelines, like #7 and #8 still apply.

5. Do not commit changes that do not have an associated bug# and have not
   had any discussion.
   Small/tiny bugfixes that do not change any functionality, are very
   unlikely to break anything and definitely don't require any prior
   discussion may be exempted.

6. Regarding reidenting, restructuring or other code cleanups: please
   discuss before doing so. The other devs might not agree with you on the
   particular cleanup you have in mind which would result in another
   clean-up-the-cleanup commit.
   You may, however reindent and clean up individual sections when you are
   working on fixing a particular bug# or implementing a new feature. In fact
   you're encouraged to do so if the code is confusing without it. However,
   obey the style of Unreal's code (mostly outlined in this document)
   and do not introduce yet another (new) style. Also, be careful with doing
   any cleanup: if you're unsure in any way about the use of something,
   or something that looks redundant on first sight, then look more
   carefully... it might indeed be useless and/or redundant, but it might
   also be a subtle thing that can create great bugs when 'cleaned up'.

7. Prior to a release: be very careful with any restructuring of a subsystem
   or doing any major commits that may break things. Stuff like this can be
   perfectly fine if there are many months to go, but are not good to do a
   month before release. The head coder may impose additional restrictions
   during such a period.

8. During the Release Candidate stage (from RC1 until the final release)
   only the head coder may commit directly, all others should ask and
   present their patch before committing. Yes, even if you are changing only
   1 line of code or text.

9. UnrealIRCd should compile on all supported operating systems and
   platforms, using GCC 3 or higher on *NIX, and Visual Studio 2008 or
   higher on Windows. This means you cannot blindly use all C99 extensions.

10. Coders should test their code before committing.

11. /*  
     * These kind of comments
     */
 
   NOT
 
   // These kind of comments

12. 	if (something == 1) 
   	{
		moo; /* comment */
		/* This does what what what */
		cow(go(moo));
	}
	
	NOT 
	
	if (something == 1) {
	}
	
13. Do not touch version.c.SH or version.h, unless you are a head coder
    if you need a credit in, contact us
   
14. Protocol changes must be discussed before making patches for it.

15. We do NOT rip people off. If we use other people's code, it MUST be
    properly credited.

16. We generally use tabsize 4 and 8. In any case, use tabs and NOT spaces.
    Some code is old and horrible and has a mix of tabs and spaces used for
    spacing, that's something we do not want to have ;)

17. Be careful about overflows. As you know a line from a user can never be longer
    than 511 (510?) characters, sometimes you can use this knowledge to your
    advantage. Whenever it's not safe or when you don't know what input size you
    can expect, use strlcpy instead of strcpy. Do not ever use strncpy, this is
    older, slower, and does not add proper zero termination.
    For the same reason, use snprintf if really needed. Note though, that using
    ircsprintf with a bigger buffer (eg: 1024 bytes) is MUCH faster, so preferably
    use that instead of snprintf. The same can be true for strcpy vs strlcpy in
    some circumstances as well.

18. Speed.  When optimizing or writing code, keep in mind that readability and
    stability comes FIRST, and after that comes speed. So we'd rather prefer some
    readable code (even if difficult) over some odd highly optimized routine which
    nobody understands, is difficult to extend, and might have several bugs.
    As mentioned earlier: use ircsprintf, not sprintf (this is because ircsprintf
    is optimized for simple strings like the ones we use).
    Prefer ircsprintf with a bigger buffer over the use of snprintf, since
    ircsprintf is much faster.

19. Initialize your structs and use the proper memory calls.
    In UnrealIRCd we use MyMalloc, MyMallocEx and MyFree (so not malloc/free).
    MyMalloc usually maps to malloc, and MyMallocEx is a malloc plus filling
    the memory area (eg: the struct) with zero's (a la calloc).
    Use of MyMallocEx is suggested. In general you should not be using MyMalloc.
    "But MyMalloc is faster!" you might say. This is true, but using MyMallocEx
    has very little speed impact and enormous benefits: people tend to forget
    to set certain fields in the struct to NULL, or much more common: when
    someone later on (eg: 1 year later) adds a field to a struct, there could
    be several places he/she needs to update to make sure x->something is NULL
    after allocating a new struct. Bad idea.
    Little speed impact, huge stability benefits, easy decision ;).

20. Comment your code! This should speak for itself...
    Put comments wherever you think they are needed, to aid any further coders
    with reading your code.. and, in fact, it will aid yourself as well if you
    would look back at your code 2 years later.
    If there's some obscure pitfall, do mention it! Don't just "hope" a next
    author will see it like you did.

21. Use enums whenever possible, rather than #define constants. Besides making
    things more clean, it also aids debugging.