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- 8ch indent, no tabs
- Variables and functions *must* be static, unless they have a
prototype, and are supposed to be exported.
- structs in MixedCase (with exceptions, such as public API structs),
variables + functions in lower_case.
- The destructors always unregister the object from the next bigger
object, not the other way around
- To minimize strict aliasing violations we prefer unions over casting
- For robustness reasons destructors should be able to destruct
half-initialized objects, too
- Error codes are returned as negative Exxx. i.e. return -EINVAL. There
are some exceptions: for constructors its is OK to return NULL on
OOM. For lookup functions NULL is fine too for "not found".
Be strict with this. When you write a function that can fail due to
more than one cause, it *really* should have "int" as return value
for the error code.
- Don't bother with error checking whether writing to stdout/stderr
worked.
- Do not log errors from "library" code, only do so from "main
program" code. (With one exception: it's OK to log with DEBUG level
from any code, with the exception of maybe inner loops).
- Always check OOM. There's no excuse. In program code you can use
"log_oom()" for then printing a short message, but not in "library" code.
- Do not issue NSS requests (that includes user name and host name
lookups) from PID 1 as this might trigger deadlocks when those
lookups involve synchronously talking to services that we would need
to start up
- Don't synchronously talk to any other service from PID 1, due to
risk of deadlocks
- Avoid fixed sized string buffers, unless you really know the maximum
size and that maximum size is small. They are a source of errors,
since they possibly result in truncated strings. Often it is nicer
to use dynamic memory, alloca() or VLAs. If you do allocate fixed
size strings on the stack, then it's probably only OK if you either
use a maximum size such as LINE_MAX, or count in detail the maximum
size a string can have. (DECIMAL_STR_MAX and DECIMAL_STR_WIDTH
macros are your friends for this!)
Or in other words, if you use "char buf[256]" then you are likely
doing something wrong!
- Stay uniform. For example, always use "usec_t" for time
values. Don't usec mix msec, and usec and whatnot.
- Make use of _cleanup_free_ and friends. It makes your code much
nicer to read!
- Be exceptionally careful when formatting and parsing floating point
numbers. Their syntax is locale dependent (i.e. "5.000" in en_US is
generally understood as 5, while on de_DE as 5000.).
- Try to use this:
void foo() {
}
instead of this:
void foo()
{
}
But it's OK if you don't.
- Don't write "foo ()", write "foo()".
- Please use streq() and strneq() instead of strcmp(), strncmp() where applicable.
- Please do not allocate variables on the stack in the middle of code,
even if C99 allows it. Wrong:
{
a = 5;
int b;
b = a;
}
Right:
{
int b;
a = 5;
b = a;
}
- Unless you allocate an array, "double" is always the better choice
than "float". Processors speak "double" natively anyway, so this is
no speed benefit, and on calls like printf() "float"s get upgraded
to "double"s anyway, so there is no point.
- Don't invoke functions when you allocate variables on the stack. Wrong:
{
int a = foobar();
uint64_t x = 7;
}
Right:
{
int a;
uint64_t x = 7;
a = foobar();
}
- Use "goto" for cleaning up, and only use it for that. i.e. you may
only jump to the end of a function, and little else. Never jump
backwards!
- Think about the types you use. If a value cannot sensibly be
negative don't use "int", but use "unsigned".
- Don't use types like "short". They *never* make sense. Use ints,
longs, long longs, all in unsigned+signed fashion, and the fixed
size types uint32_t and so on, as well as size_t but nothing else.
- Public API calls (i.e. functions exported by our shared libraries)
must be marked "_public_" and need to be prefixed with "sd_". No
other functions should be prefixed like that.
- In public API calls you *must* validate all your input arguments for
programming error with assert_return() and return a sensible return
code. In all other calls it is recommended to check for programming
errors with a more brutal assert(). We are more forgiving to public
users then for ourselves! Note that assert() and assert_return()
really only should be used for detecting programming errors, not for
runtime errors. assert() and assert_return() by usage of _likely_()
inform the compiler that he shouldn't expect these checks to fail,
and they inform fellow programmers about the expected validity and
range of parameters.
- Never use strtol(), atoi() and similar calls. Use safe_atoli(),
safe_atou32() and suchlike instead. They are much nicer to use in
most cases and correctly check for parsing errors.
- For every function you add, think about whether it is a "logging"
function or a "non-logging" function. "Logging" functions do logging
on their own, "non-logging" function never log on their own and
expect their callers to log. All functions in "library" code,
i.e. in src/shared/ and suchlike must be "non-logging". Everytime a
"logging" function calls a "non-logging" function it should log
about the resulting errors. If a "logging" function calls another
"logging" function, then it should not generate log messages, so
that log messages are not generated twice for the same errors.
- Avoid static variables, except for caches and very few other
cases. Think about thread-safety! While most of our code is never
used in threaded environments at least the library code should make
sure it works correctly in them. Instead of doing a lot of locking
for that we tend to prefer using TLS to do per-thread caching (which
only works for small, fixed-size cache objects), or we disable
caching for any thread that is not the main thread. Use
is_main_thread() to detect whether the calling thread is the main
thread.
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