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Re: Developer Guide



On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 11:13:28PM +0000, Muhammad Alkarouri wrote:
> Salam,
> First, I believe a developer guide is something that is needed, because I know
> that some people are not that experienced in developing open source projects.
> I have a few comments. I assumed that I will have some advice on how it can be

All comments/advice/etc are welcome ;) Of course the ones I don't like
are quitely forwarded to /dev/null ;)

> done. It's a guide not a standard, judging from the name (you didn't mean that
> I know). As one cannot teach all that in a document, I assumed there will be
> some links, like this one for example:
> https://www.redhat.com/docs/wp/intro_dev/(says a very feeble intro about make
> and cvs among other thigs), or how-tos from tldp.
> Well, it is not that, and I should know better.

You are right -- links are missing and will be added.

> 
> What I really like to comment on is that assuming C/C++ standards for most
> other things is not that important. Actually I don't feel like even the Type
> capital/variable small rule is shared among all C programmers, though it seems
> like that in Java (maybe?). Your rules seem like the accepted rules in
> http://geosoft.no/style.html (just they use some files not all small?).

They are not shared among all programmers of the world, that's for sure.
No arguments there. I think I will change that. It seems that it is too
strict. I will keep them as 'suggestions' and insist on consistency
whatever 'style' a developer uses. I think that would be fair.

> 
> Indentation is a good point, and I actually prefer spaces to tabs, but isn't
> that because the Python culture prefer spaces? Why not simply let anybody
> process his C/C++ files with indent, for example?
> 

Samy went over this with great passion in his earlier post ;) It's out.

> Sure I must learn doxygen? Isn't it enough I am learning cvs for the moment
> just to comply with Arabeyes (yes, I get software with it. and yes, I do

Heh.. well, I could instead be asking everyone to create full fledged
documents in SGML detailing their code ;) Doxygen is rather simple and
aside from the configuration file (which is not an issue -- many IDE's
and helper programs exist to generate it for you), the commenting style
is simple and not a serious issue.

The point here is to properly document your code. One way has to be
chosen. I picked Doxygen's. 

> version control, using subversion now). And would you please mandate
> reStructured text for Python (I am trying that now). And everybody write

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you referring to this:
http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi/FrontPage

> programs using autotools..

We have at lease one project off the top of my head that does not use
autotools ;)

> 
> /*Please forgive me - all of you - for the next ones*/
> Mandate not using Perl except to support already written programs?

Heheh.. I wish I would do something like that -- but personal feelings
about Perl aside, it doesn't relate to the guide ;)

> No releases are to be made without guranteeing portability, at least between
> Linux (all major distros), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris (for a start).

Not possible -- for several reasons. Aside from the example of Akka
(which to my knowledge never worked on Solaris and was only ported to
FreeBSD in a much earlier version, only works on Linux), there are other
issues at hand.

1. Not everyone has access to all those systems.
2. Even if we were to compile at a compiler farm, GUI applications
   cannot be tested.

If a program compiles successfully on a given Linux system, it by
definition should do the same on any given distribution. There are a few
exceptions (again, only Akka does some special things that require
fiddling with variations in how distro's structure their console tools
and keymaps). But that's why you need an INSTALL ;)


Regards
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
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