We semi-regularly have discussions around whether a function shall be
named `S_release()`, `S_clear()` or `S_free()`. Indeed, it may not be
obvious which of these is preferable as we never really defined what
each of these variants means exactly.
Carve out a space where we can add idiomatic names for common functions
in our coding guidelines and define each of those functions. Like this,
we can get to a shared understanding of their respective semantics and
can easily point towards our style guide in future discussions such that
our codebase becomes more consistent over time.
Note that the intent is not to rename all functions which violate these
semantics right away. Rather, the intent is to slowly converge towards a
common style over time.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We nowadays have a proper mishmash of struct-related functions that are
called `<verb>_<struct>` (e.g. `clear_prio_queue()`) versus functions
that are called `<struct>_<verb>` (e.g. `strbuf_clear()`). While the
former style may be easier to tie into a spoken conversation, most of
our communication happens in text anyway. Furthermore, prefixing
functions with the name of the structure they operate on makes it way
easier to group them together, see which functions are related, and will
also help folks who are using code completion.
Let's thus settle on one style, namely the one where functions start
with the name of the structure they operate on.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In the preceding commit, we have settled on using a single space per
nesting level to indent preprocessor directives. Clarify our coding
guidelines accordingly.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Document and apply workaround for a buggy version of dash that
mishandles "local var=val" construct.
* jc/local-extern-shell-rules:
t1016: local VAR="VAL" fix
t0610: local VAR="VAL" fix
t: teach lint that RHS of 'local VAR=VAL' needs to be quoted
t: local VAR="VAL" (quote ${magic-reference})
t: local VAR="VAL" (quote command substitution)
t: local VAR="VAL" (quote positional parameters)
CodingGuidelines: quote assigned value in 'local var=$val'
CodingGuidelines: describe "export VAR=VAL" rule
Dash bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dash/+bug/139097
lets the shell erroneously perform field splitting on the expansion
of a command substitution during declaration of a local or an extern
variable.
The explanation was stolen from ebee5580 (parallel-checkout: avoid
dash local bug in tests, 2021-06-06).
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
https://lore.kernel.org/git/201307081121.22769.tboegi@web.de/
resulted in 9968ffff (test-lint: detect 'export FOO=bar',
2013-07-08) to add a rule to t/check-non-portable-shell.pl script to
reject
export VAR=VAL
and suggest us to instead write it as two statements, i.e.,
VAR=VAL
export VAR
This however was not spelled out in the CodingGuidelines document.
We may want to re-evaluate the rule since it is from ages ago, but
for now, let's make the written rule and what the automation
enforces consistent.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Literal and placeholder formatting is more heavily enforced, with some
asciidoc magic. Basically, the markup is preserved everywhere.
Signed-off-by: Jean-Noël Avila <jn.avila@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Clarify wording in the CodingGuidelines that requires <git-compat-util.h>
to be the first header file.
* jc/doc-compat-util:
doc: clarify the wording on <git-compat-util.h> requirement
The way placeholders are to be marked-up in documentation have been
specified; use "_<placeholder>_" to typeset the word inside a pair
of <angle-brakets> emphasized.
* ja/doc-placeholders-markup-rules:
doc: clarify the format of placeholders
The reason why we require the <git-compat-util.h> file to be the
first header file to be included is because it insulates other
header files and source files from platform differences, like which
system header files must be included in what order, and what C
preprocessor feature macros must be defined to trigger certain
features we want out of the system.
We tried to clarify the rule in the coding guidelines document, but
the wording was a bit fuzzy that can lead to misinterpretations like
you can include <xdiff/xinclude.h> only to avoid having to include
<git-compat-util.h> even if you have nothing to do with the xdiff
implementation, for example. "You do not have to include more than
one of these" was also misleading and would have been puzzling if
you _needed_ to depend on more than one of these approved headers
(answer: you are allowed to include them all if you need the
declarations in them for reasons other than that you want to avoid
including compat-util yourself).
Instead of using the phrase "approved headers", enumerate them as
exceptions, each labeled with its intended audiences, to avoid such
misinterpretations. The structure also makes it easier to add new
exceptions, so add the description of "t/unit-tests/test-lib.h"
being an exception only for the unit tests implementation as an
example.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Acked-by: Kyle Lippincott <spectral@google.com>
Acked-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Add the new format rule when using placeholders in the description of
commands and options.
Signed-off-by: Jean-Noël Avila <jn.avila@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Doc update.
* js/contributor-docs-updates:
SubmittingPatches: hyphenate non-ASCII
SubmittingPatches: clarify GitHub artifact format
SubmittingPatches: clarify GitHub visual
SubmittingPatches: provide tag naming advice
SubmittingPatches: update extra tags list
SubmittingPatches: discourage new trailers
SubmittingPatches: drop ref to "What's in git.git"
CodingGuidelines: write punctuation marks
CodingGuidelines: move period inside parentheses
Stale URLs have been updated to their current counterparts (or
archive.org) and HTTP links are replaced with working HTTPS links.
* js/update-urls-in-doc-and-comment:
doc: refer to internet archive
doc: update links for andre-simon.de
doc: switch links to https
doc: update links to current pages
Newer versions of Getopt::Long started giving warnings against our
(ab)use of it in "git send-email". Bump the minimum version
requirement for Perl to 5.8.1 (from September 2002) to allow
simplifying our implementation.
* tz/send-email-negatable-options:
send-email: avoid duplicate specification warnings
perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.8.1 from 5.8.0
Doc update.
* js/contributor-docs-updates:
SubmittingPatches: hyphenate non-ASCII
SubmittingPatches: clarify GitHub artifact format
SubmittingPatches: clarify GitHub visual
SubmittingPatches: provide tag naming advice
SubmittingPatches: update extra tags list
SubmittingPatches: discourage new trailers
SubmittingPatches: drop ref to "What's in git.git"
CodingGuidelines: write punctuation marks
CodingGuidelines: move period inside parentheses
The contents within parenthesis should be omittable without resulting
in broken text.
Eliding the parenthesis left a period to end a run without any content.
Signed-off-by: Josh Soref <jsoref@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Stale URLs have been updated to their current counterparts (or
archive.org) and HTTP links are replaced with working HTTPS links.
* js/update-urls-in-doc-and-comment:
doc: refer to internet archive
doc: update links for andre-simon.de
doc: switch links to https
doc: update links to current pages
Newer versions of Getopt::Long started giving warnings against our
(ab)use of it in "git send-email". Bump the minimum version
requirement for Perl to 5.8.1 (from September 2002) to allow
simplifying our implementation.
* tz/send-email-negatable-options:
send-email: avoid duplicate specification warnings
perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.8.1 from 5.8.0
It's somewhat traditional to respect sites' self-identification.
Signed-off-by: Josh Soref <jsoref@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The following commit will make use of a Getopt::Long feature which is
only present in Perl >= 5.8.1. Document that as the minimum version we
support.
Many of our Perl scripts will continue to run with 5.8.0 but this change
allows us to adjust them as needed without breaking any promises to our
users.
The Perl requirement was last changed in d48b284183 (perl: bump the
required Perl version to 5.8 from 5.6.[21], 2010-09-24). At that time,
5.8.0 was 8 years old. It is now over 21 years old.
Signed-off-by: Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
No disrespect to other mailing list archives, but the local part of
their URLs will become pretty much meaningless once the archives go
out of service, and we learned the lesson hard way when $gmane
stopped serving.
Let's point into https://lore.kernel.org/ for an article that can be
found there, because the local part of the URL has the Message-Id:
that can be used to find the same message in other archives, even if
lore goes down.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Header files cleanup.
* en/header-split-cache-h-part-3: (28 commits)
fsmonitor-ll.h: split this header out of fsmonitor.h
hash-ll, hashmap: move oidhash() to hash-ll
object-store-ll.h: split this header out of object-store.h
khash: name the structs that khash declares
merge-ll: rename from ll-merge
git-compat-util.h: remove unneccessary include of wildmatch.h
builtin.h: remove unneccessary includes
list-objects-filter-options.h: remove unneccessary include
diff.h: remove unnecessary include of oidset.h
repository: remove unnecessary include of path.h
log-tree: replace include of revision.h with simple forward declaration
cache.h: remove this no-longer-used header
read-cache*.h: move declarations for read-cache.c functions from cache.h
repository.h: move declaration of the_index from cache.h
merge.h: move declarations for merge.c from cache.h
diff.h: move declaration for global in diff.c from cache.h
preload-index.h: move declarations for preload-index.c from elsewhere
sparse-index.h: move declarations for sparse-index.c from cache.h
name-hash.h: move declarations for name-hash.c from cache.h
run-command.h: move declarations for run-command.c from cache.h
...
Suggest to refrain from using hex literals that are non-portable
when writing printf(1) format strings.
* jt/doc-use-octal-with-printf:
CodingGuidelines: use octal escapes, not hex
Since this header showed up in some places besides just #include
statements, update/clean-up/remove those other places as well.
Note that compat/fsmonitor/fsm-path-utils-darwin.c previously got
away with violating the rule that all files must start with an include
of git-compat-util.h (or a short-list of alternate headers that happen
to include it first). This change exposed the violation and caused it
to stop building correctly; fix it by having it include
git-compat-util.h first, as per policy.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Extend the shell-scripting section of CodingGuidelines to suggest octal
escape sequences (e.g. "\302\242") over hexadecimal (e.g. "\xc2\xa2")
since the latter can be a source of portability problems.
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Tan <jonathantanmy@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
These were found with an automated CLI tool [1]. Only the
"Documentation" subfolder (and not source code files) was considered
because the docs are user-facing.
[1]: https://crates.io/crates/typos-cli
Signed-off-by: Linus Arver <linusa@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We had several C files ignoring the rule to include one of the
appropriate headers first; fix that.
While at it, the rule in Documentation/CodingGuidelines about which
header to include has also fallen out of sync, so update the wording to
mention other allowed headers.
Unfortunately, C files in reftable/ don't actually follow the previous
or updated rule. If you follow the #include chain in its C files,
reftable/system.h _tends_ to be first (i.e. record.c first includes
record.h, which first includes basics.h, which first includees
system.h), but not always (e.g. publicbasics.c includes another header
first that does not include system.h). However, I'm going to punt on
making actual changes to the C files in reftable/ since I do not want to
risk bringing it out-of-sync with any version being used externally.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The short-help text shown by "git cmd -h" and the synopsis text
shown at the beginning of "git help cmd" have been made more
consistent.
* ab/doc-synopsis-and-cmd-usage: (34 commits)
tests: assert consistent whitespace in -h output
tests: start asserting that *.txt SYNOPSIS matches -h output
doc txt & -h consistency: make "worktree" consistent
worktree: define subcommand -h in terms of command -h
reflog doc: list real subcommands up-front
doc txt & -h consistency: make "commit" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: make "diff-tree" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: use "[<label>...]" for "zero or more"
doc txt & -h consistency: make "annotate" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: make "stash" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: add missing options
doc txt & -h consistency: use "git foo" form, not "git-foo"
doc txt & -h consistency: make "bundle" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: make "read-tree" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: make "rerere" consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: add missing options and labels
doc txt & -h consistency: make output order consistent
doc txt & -h consistency: add or fix optional "--" syntax
doc txt & -h consistency: fix mismatching labels
doc SYNOPSIS & -h: use "-" to separate words in labels, not "_"
...
Update CodingGuidelines to clarify what features to use and avoid
in C99.
* ab/coding-guidelines-c99:
CodingGuidelines: recommend against unportable C99 struct syntax
CodingGuidelines: mention C99 features we can't use
CodingGuidelines: allow declaring variables in for loops
CodingGuidelines: mention dynamic C99 initializer elements
CodingGuidelines: update for C99
Edit the section which explains how to create a good SYNOPSIS section
for clarity and accuracy, it was mostly introduced in
c455bd8950 (CodingGuidelines: Add a section on writing documentation,
2010-11-04):
* Change "extra" example to "file", which now naturally follows from
previous "<file>..." example (one or more) to "[<file>...]" (zero or
more).
* Explain how we prefer spacing around "[]()" tokens and "|"
alternatives, this is not a new policy, but just codifies what's
already the pattern in the most wide use in the documentation.
Having a space around " | " for flags, but not for flag values is
inconsistent, but this style guide codifies existing
patterns. Grepping shows that we don't have any instance matching the
second "Don't" example:
git grep -E -h -o '=\([^)]+\)' -- builtin Documentation/
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Per 33665d98e6 (reftable: make assignments portable to AIX xlc
v12.01, 2022-03-28) forms like ".a.b = *c" can be replaced by using
".a = { .b = *c }" instead.
We'll probably allow these sooner than later, but since the workaround
is trivial let's note it among the C99 features we'd like to hold off
on for now.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The C99 section of the CodingGuidelines is a good overview of what we
can use, but is sorely lacking in what we can't use. Something that
comes up occasionally is the portability of %z.
Per [1] we couldn't use it for the longest time due to MSVC not
supporting it, but nowadays by requiring C99 we rely on the MSVC
version that does, but we can't use it yet because a C library that
MinGW uses doesn't support it.
1. https://lore.kernel.org/git/a67e0fd8-4a14-16c9-9b57-3430440ef93c@gmail.com/
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Since 44ba10d671 (revision: use C99 declaration of variable in for()
loop, 2021-11-14) released with v2.35.0 we've had a variable declared
with in a for loop.
Since then we've had inadvertent follow-ups to that with at least
cb2607759e (merge-ort: store more specific conflict information,
2022-06-18) released with v2.38.0.
As November 2022 is within the window of this upcoming release,
let's update the guideline to allow this. We can have the promised
"revisit" discussion while this patch cooks, and drop it if it turns
out that it is still premature, which is not expected to happen at
this moment.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The first use of variables in initializer elements appears to have
been 2b6854c863 (Cleanup variables in cat-file, 2007-04-21) released
with v1.5.2.
Some of those caused portability issues, and e.g. that "cat-file" use
was changed in 66dbfd55e3 (Rewrite dynamic structure initializations
to runtime assignment, 2010-05-14) which went out with v1.7.2.
But curiously 66dbfd55e3 missed some of them, e.g. an archive.c use
added in d5f53d6d6f (archive: complain about path specs that don't
match anything, 2009-12-12), and another one in merge-index.c (later
builtin/merge-index.c) in 0077138cd9 (Simplify some instances of
run_command() by using run_command_v_opt()., 2009-06-08).
As far as I can tell there's been no point since 2b6854c863 in 2007
where a compiler that didn't support this has been able to compile
git. Presumably 66dbfd55e3 was an attempt to make headway with wider
portability that ultimately wasn't completed.
In any case, we are thoroughly reliant on this syntax at this point,
so let's update the guidelines, see
https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqy1tunjgp.fsf@gitster.g/ for the
initial discussion.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Since 7bc341e21b (git-compat-util: add a test balloon for C99
support, 2021-12-01) we've had a hard dependency on C99, but the prose
in CodingGuidelines was written under the assumption that we were
using C89 with a few C99 features.
As the updated prose notes we'd still like to hold off on novel C99
features, but let's make it clear that we target that C version, and
then enumerate new C99 features that are safe to use.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Despite forbidden by CodingGuidelines, our usage of 'grep -E' has been
increased over the years, and noone has come and complained.
Let's lift the restriction.
Signed-off-by: Đoàn Trần Công Danh <congdanhqx@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Inspired by 24966cd982 ("doc: fix repeated words", 08-09-2019),
I ran "egrep -R "\<([a-zA-Z]+)\> \<\1\>" ./Documentation/*" to
find current cases of repeated words such as "the the" that were
quite clearly typos.
There were many false positives reported, such as "really really"
or valid uses of "that that" which I left alone.
Signed-off-by: Jacob Stopak <jacob@initialcommit.io>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This document gathers tips, scripts and configuration file to help
people working on Git’s codebase use their favorite tools while
following Git’s coding style.
Move the part about Emacs configuration from CodingGuidelines to
ToolsForGit.txt because it's the purpose of the new file centralize the
information about tools.
But, add a mention to Documentation/ToolsForGit.txt in CodingGuidelines
because there is also information about the coding style in it.
Helped-by: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@univ-lyon1.fr>
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: COGONI Guillaume <cogoni.guillaume@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We raised the weather balloon to see if we can allow the construct
in 44ba10d6 (revision: use C99 declaration of variable in for()
loop, 2021-11-14), which was shipped as a part of Git v2.35.
Document that fact in the coding guidelines, and more importantly,
give ourselves a deadline to revisit and update.
Let's declare that we will officially adopt the variable declaration
in the initializaiton part of "for ()" statement this winter, unless
we find that a platform we care about does not grok it.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Remove the "else" branches of the HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS macro, which
have been unconditionally omitted since 765dc16888 (git-compat-util:
always enable variadic macros, 2021-01-28).
Since were always omitted, anyone trying to use a compiler without
variadic macro support to compile a git since version
git v2.31.0 or later would have had a compilation error. 10 months
across a few releases since then should have been enough time for
anyone who cared to run into that and report the issue.
In addition to that, for anyone unsetting HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS we've
been emitting extremely verbose warnings since at least
ee4512ed48 (trace2: create new combined trace facility,
2019-02-22). That's because there is no such thing as a
"region_enter_printf" or "region_leave_printf" format, so at least
under GCC and Clang everything that includes trace.h (almost every
file) emits a couple of warnings about that.
There's a large benefit to being able to have a hard dependency rely
on variadic macros, the code surrounding usage.c is hard to maintain
if we need to write two implementations of everything, and by relying
on "__FILE__" and "__LINE__" along with "__VA_ARGS__" we can in the
future make error(), die() etc. log where they were called from. We've
also recently merged d67fc4bf0b (Merge branch 'bc/require-c99',
2021-12-10) which further cements our hard dependency on C99.
So let's delete the fallback code, and update our CodingGuidelines to
note that we depend on this. The added bullet-point starts with
lower-case for consistency with other bullet-points in that section.
The diff in "trace.h" is relatively hard to read, since we need to
retain the existing API docs, which were comments on the code used if
HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS was not defined.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
It has long been practice on this project for a command to emit its
primary output to stdout so that it can be captured to a file or sent
down a pipe, and to emit "chatty" messages (such as those reporting
progress) to stderr so that they don't interfere with the primary
output. However, this practice is not necessarily universal; another
common practice is to send only error messages to stderr, and all other
messages to stdout. Therefore, help newcomers out by documenting how
stdout and stderr are used on this project.
Signed-off-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Acked-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
A guideline for gender neutral documentation has been added.
* ds/gender-neutral-doc-guidelines:
CodingGuidelines: recommend gender-neutral description
Technical writing seeks to convey information with minimal
friction. One way that a reader can experience friction is if they
encounter a description of "a user" that is later simplified using a
gendered pronoun. If the reader does not consider that pronoun to
apply to them, then they can experience cognitive dissonance that
removes focus from the information.
Give some basic tips to guide us avoid unnecessary uses of gendered
description.
Using a gendered pronoun is appropriate when referring to a specific
person.
There are acceptable existing uses of gendered pronouns within the
Git codebase, such as:
* References to real people (e.g. Linus Torvalds, "the Git maintainer").
Do not misgender real people. If there is any doubt to the gender of a
person, then avoid using pronouns.
* References to fictional people with clear genders (e.g. Alice and
Bob).
* Sample text used in test cases (e.g t3702, t6432).
* The official text of the GPL license contains uses of "he or she",
but using singular "they" (or modifying the text in some other
way) is not within the scope of the Git project.
* Literal email messages in Documentation/howto/ should not be edited
for grammatical concerns such as this, unless we update the entire
document to fit the standard documentation format. If such an effort is
taken on, then the authorship would change and no longer refer to the
exact mail message.
* External projects consumed in contrib/ should not deviate solely for
style reasons. Recommended edits should be contributed to those
projects directly.
Other cases within the Git project were cleaned up by the previous
changes.
Co-authored-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Patrick Steinhardt