Coding/Guidelines

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General

  • If you change a function prototype make sure that all other prototypes for all the ports out there are changed, too (otherwise you will break the port)
  • Use ANSI C99, except in platform specific code, even then only use something else if you ABSOLUTELY have to.
  • Use K&R style of coding (what, you DON'T own a copy?)
  • C-style comments ONLY!
    /* comment */
  • If you need to temporarily disable a chunk of code, use #if 0 ... #endif, rather than just a /* comment */.
  • One declaration per line please.
  • Try to only include those headers that are really needed (to keep the compile times low when you change a header)
  • Avoid using one big header for everything. Almost each C-file should get its own header someday.
  • Guard headers with <dir under src>_<filename without .h>_H in capitals. For example ./src/client/cdaudio.h is guarded with:
#ifndef CLIENT_CDAUDIO_H
#define CLIENT_CDAUDIO_H

...

#endif /* CLIENT_CDAUDIO_H */
  • remember to put a blank line at the end of the file (GCC will complain if you don't.)
  • don't put more than one blank line at the end of the file (GIT will complain if you do.)
  • All files must contain a GPL notification (google GPL or just lookup an existing file).
  • Always use braces in if-else blocks. Doing anything else is error-prone. One line ifs are okay. E.g.
/* This is okay */
if (x)
    printf("Blah"); 

/* This may look okay, but can get very messy when you start nesting */
if (x) 
    printf("Meep");
else if (y)
    printf("Moop");
else

/* This is the worst of all */
if (x) {
    printf("A");
    if (z)
        printf("B");
    else if (j) {
        printf("X");
    } else
        printf("Z");
} else if (y)
    printf("C");
else
    printf("D");
  • Feel free to use indent (Unix / Cygwin). Current command: indent -kr -l160 -bad -bap -ut -i4 -ts4 <filename>

TABs

  1. Use TABs instead of spaces.
  2. Use a TAB-width of 4 characters (editor settings). Do NOT SAVE THE SPACES in the files, see first point.

Long conditional expressions

  1. break before an operator
  2. indent the operator just enough to align the rest of the expression with its first half
  3. in most situations this means one space: [space]operator[space] becomes 4 characters
	if ((to->armour && Q_strcmp(fItem->item.t->type, "armour"))
	 || (to->extension && !fItem->item.t->extension)
	 || (to->headgear && !fItem->item.t->headgear)) {
		return IA_NONE;
	}

If such conditionals are repeated in various places, make them a macro or separate function.

Whitespaces in function declarations, definitions and calls

These are guidelines about whitespace usage between the function name and the left bracket that starts the argument list.

Omit it in the headers in function declarations: 

void prototype(void);

Include it in function definitions: 

void prototype (void)
{
  /* implementation */
}

Omit it in function calls: 

void someother (void)
{
[...]
  prototype();
[...]
}

This format makes it easy to find functions in the code. It also makes the code easier to read.

General function & variable names

  • Function names look like: CL_MyRandomFunction(), where CL is the abreviation of the compilation unit (the C-file the function is located in). This includes #define macros that work like functions.
  • Console vars look like this: cl_lower_case.
  • All other variables should be written in camel case.

Identifiers and names inside structs

There is alot of (deprecated) code where there are the following variables defined inside a struct:

  • name or kurz - ('kurz' is german for 'short') short string-identifier from the ufo-files.
  • title - Translated full name.

They should not be used and replaced with the following:

  • id - short string-identifier from the ufo-files. [replaces name from above]
  • name - xxx [replaces title from above]
  • idx - xxx

Attention has to be paid to the different meaning of the name variable. Please try to not mix them up.

Structures / Typedefs

Structures / typedefs are: 

typedef struct menuNode_s {} menuNode_t;

YES, you WILL typedef your structs!

Structure members should be added by one per line and should be documented properly. Bad example: 

typedef struct menuNode_s {
    int blah, a;
    int blahBlah;
} menuNode_t;

For good one look into full example.

Text being sent to the user

Any text being sent to the user needs to be written in English. Yes, in English - not Polish English or German English. That means - start with uppercase letter, end with dot. Bad:

  • CL_DisplayHudMessage(_("your soldier is dazed\n"), 2000);

Ok:

  • CL_DisplayHudMessage(_("Your soldier is dazed.\n"), 2000);

Plural forms

Use ngettext function to handle plurals. It can select right form in regard of item count. DO NOT prefix texts with _(). Usage: ngettext("singular", "plural", cnt). See Full Example.

Full Example

/**
 * @file main.c
 * @brief Main source file.
 *
 * Contains the main() function and many associated functions and typedefs.
 */

/*
 * All original material Copyright (C) 2002-2006 UFO: Alien Invasion team.
 *
 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
 * as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
 * of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 *
 * See the GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.
 *
 */

/**
 * @brief Holds information about individual nodes in a menu.
 */
typedef struct menuNode_s {
    int blah; /**< This is a documentation comment. */    
    int a; /* armour */ /**< Calling this 'a' then putting a comment immediately after is just dumb. Don't do it; use meaningful names */
    int blahBlah; /**< The total number of blahs. */
} menuNode_t;

/**
 * @brief Does this and that
 * @return Returns blah if blub.
 */
int Function (void)
{

}

/* This is an ordinary C comment. 
If you encounter one of these you will need to update it to a full doxygen comment where appropriate.
*/
int R_DrawStuff (void)
{

}

/**
 * @brief The main function and program entry point.
 *
 * The line above is the brief description of the function below.
 * Anything after the blank line is the detailed description (these two lines).
 * @return Returns the interesting result.
 */
int main (void)
{
    int x;
    int y;

    if (x < y) {
        x *= y;
    } else if (x > y) {
        y = x;
    } else {
        printf("Blah!");
    }
    
    for (x = 10; x > 0; x--) {
        /* Do something interesting */
        printf(ngettext("Remain %i day\n", "Remain %i days\n", x), x);
    }

    return 0;
}

#include rules

  1. Every c/cpp file includes its own header file first.
  2. A header file must include all the header files necessary to parse it. This goes hand in hand with the first guideline. I know some people try to never include header files within header files claiming efficiency or something along those lines. However, if a file must be included before a header file can be parsed, it has to be included somewhere. The advantage of including it directly in the header file is that we can always decide to pull in a header file we’re interested in and we’re guaranteed that it’ll work as is. We don’t have to play the “guess what other headers you need” game.
  3. A header file should have the bare minimum number of header files necessary to parse it. The previous rule said you should have all the includes you need in a header file. This rule says you shouldn’t have any more than you have to. Clearly, start by removing (or not adding in the first place) useless include statements. Then, use as many forward declarations as you can instead of includes. If all you have are references or pointers to a class, you don’t need to include that class’ header file; a forward reference will do nicely and much more efficiently.
  4. .h files should have exactly the same name as the corresponding .c file. (should be self-understood) (unlike files.c <> filesys.h)
  5. .c/.h pairs should have a unique name. (unlike common/bsp.c <> tools/ufo2map/bsp.c.)
  6. No .c without a .h except main(). Helps to prevent 'superincludes'. (unfortunately we have quite a lot of those)

The current UFO:AI code is very far away from complying to those rules. But well, it's a start.

Commit rules

To make the commit logs work better with some commands and filters, we have a fixed format for the commit comments: 

* The first line summarises the effect of the commit. After this follows an empty line.

* Details are written here. The above line is just the commit summary. And such
  a comment may also be on more than one line if the text is too long. But each subtopic
  should start with a * in front of it.
* The newline between the summary and the details is needed.
* Details are optional.

Documenting code

Use doxygen to document code.

Doxygen comments are very much like Javadoc. The main exception is that the comment for the file (At the top of the file) needs the @file command, as shown in the example above.

Brief comments should describe WHAT something does, NOT how. For example, a good comment. 

/**
 * @brief Calculates the chance to hit.
 * @param[in] skill <What skill is.>
 * @param[in] distance <What distance is.>
 * @return <What is returned in which case>
 */
float ToHit (int skill, float distance)
{
}

And a bad one - it should be apparent from the code: 

/**
 * @brief Calculates the chance to hit by taking the skill, dividing it by the distance and multiplying by F.
 */
float ToHit (int skill, float distance)
{
}

The detailed description should include enough detail to understand how the function works, in the above example, the detailed description should probably describe the factors involved in shooting, so that someone testing the gameplay could experiment with a spreadsheet.

There is a doxygen config file to generate HTML documentation (latex disable for now) for every typdef, function and non-local variable in the entire source tree (except for the tools).

Blank Documentation

Blank documentation is bad. Do not leave blank doxygen commands like this: 

/**
 * @brief
 * @param
 * @sa
 */
void someFunction (void)
{
...
}

There is no reason to do this. It hides the fact that this code is undocumented. It might even confuse doxygen. If you do not want to document code then don't even start.

Code TODO's

Use the doxygen @todo command to mark TODO's in the code. For example: 

/** @todo: make the numbers work here. */

Always remember that Doxygen's commands are case sensitive. @todo is different from @TODO. The latter is not a valid command.

TODO: Needs to be more comprehensive.

Preprocessor

Use DEBUG to surround statements that are not needed for the game but are good for debugging purposes 

 #ifdef DEBUG
 dosomething();
 #endif

PARANOID surrounds some speed influencing checks for variable values and overflows. Very good for debugging - statements enclosed by PARANOID may slow down the game a lot. 

 #ifdef PARANOID
 dosomething()
 #endif

Links

Coding

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