coding_standards.md

General Coding Standards

• 3 spaces instead of tabs
• all c++ headers end in .hpp
• all c headers end in .h
• pragma once instead of header guards
• use private implementation classes for long-lived objects
  • long-lived objects are anything that could be allocated on the heap without significant overhead. Not temporaries or 'structs'.

Example of using private implementation:

namespace detail { class_name_impl; }
class class_name
{
   public:
      class_name();
      ~class_name();

   private:
      std::unique_ptr<detail::class_name_impl> my;
};

This should be used anytime where the private members would require an additional include dependency not required by the public API.

• note the formatting of the class, braces, indentions, etc.
• avoid abreviations as much as possible
• const std::string& x (not const string &x)
• char* y (not char *y)
• always use {} for conditionals and loops.

Here is an example of proper usage of braces:

  while( true )
  {
  }
  
  try {
  
  }
  catch ( ... ) 
  {
  }
  
  switch( x )
  {
     case a:
        break;
     case b:
     {
        int local = 0;
        break;
     }
     default:
        break;
  }

GUI Coding Standards

The following list includes is an example of high-level standard.

• follow the Qt conventions
• ClassName
• methodName
• _member_variable
• local_varaible
• ClassName.hpp
• ClassName.cpp
• No namespaces unless creating a GUI library

Library Coding Standards

All classes within a library are namespaced.

• follow stdlib and boost naming convention (generally)
• class_name
• set_method_name
• _member_variable
• local_variable