HACKING.md

Code Style

In order to keep the code nice and clean we have a few requirements you'll need to stick to in order to get your patch accepted:

• Use GNU-style indentation:

  if (condition)
    {
      // body
    }
  

• No braces for one line control clauses, except when another clause in the chain contains more than one line:

if (condition)
  look_no_braces ();

if (condition)
  {
    // Use braces even though it's only one statement, because
    // the condition is multiple lines long.
    function_call_with_many_arguments (arg1, arg2, arg3,
                                       arg4, arg5, arg6);
  }
else
  {
    // Use braces because the clause above did.
  }

• Callback functions have a suffix _cb. TODO: ensure existing code follows this rule.

• Use char/int/double/…, not gchar/gint/gdouble/… types, except when implementing GLib vfuncs that use these types. TODO: ensure existing code follows this rule.

• All implementation files must include first "config.h", followed by the primary header, followed by a blank line, followed by all the local headers sorted alphabetically, followed by a blank line, followed by all the system headers sorted alphabetically. Headers should follow the same pattern excluding the config.h and self file section, for obvious reasons. TODO: ensure existing code follows this rule.

• There's no space between a type cast and the variable name: Right: (int *)foo. Wrong: (int*) foo.

• Avoid explicit comparisons against TRUE, FALSE, and NULL. Right: if (!condition), if (!pointer), if (integer == 0). Wrong: if (condition == FALSE), if (pointer == NULL), if (!integer). Exception: pointer != NULL may be used to convert to gboolean since some developers find this more natural than !!pointer.