calamares/ci/HACKING.md

Hacking on Calamares

These are the guidelines for hacking on Calamares. Except for the licensing, which must be GPLv3+, these are guidelines and -- like PEP8 -- the most important thing is to know when you can ignore them.

Licensing

Calamares is released under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 3 or later. Every source file must have a license header, with a list of copyright holders and years.

Example:

/* === This file is part of Calamares - <https://github.com/calamares> ===
 *
 *   Copyright 2013-2014, Random Person <name@example.com>
 *   Copyright 2010,      Someone Else <someone@example.com>
 *
 *   Calamares is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *   the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 *   (at your option) any later version.
 *
 *   Calamares is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 *   GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 *   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *   along with Calamares. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

Copyright holders must be physical or legal personalities. A statement such as Copyright 2014, The FooBarQuux project has no legal value if "The FooBarQuux project" is not the legal name of a person, company, incorporated organization, etc.

Please add your name to files you touch when making any contribution (even if it's just a typo-fix which might not be copyrightable in all jurisdictions).

Formatting C++

This formatting guide applies to C++ code only; for Python modules, we use pycodestyle to apply a check of some PEP8 guidelines.

• Spaces, not tabs.
• Indentation is 4 spaces.
• Lines should be limited to 90 characters.
• Spaces between brackets and argument functions, including for template arguments
• No space before brackets, except for keywords, for example function( argument ) but if ( condition ).
• For pointer and reference variable declarations, put a space before the variable name and no space between the type and the * or &, e.g. int* p.
• for, if, else, while and similar statements put the braces on the next line, if the following block is more than one statement. Use no braces for single statements.
• Function and class definitions have their braces on separate lines.
• A function implementation's return type is on its own line.
• CamelCase.{cpp,h} style file names.

Example:

bool
MyClass::myMethod( QStringList list, const QString& name )
{
    if ( list.isEmpty() )
        return false;

    cDebug() << "Items in list ..";
    foreach ( const QString& string, list )
        cDebug() << "  .." << string;

    switch ( m_enumValue )
    {
    case Something:
        return true;
    case SomethingElse:
        doSomething();
        break;
    }
}

You can use the ci/calamaresstyle script to run astyle on your code and have it formatted the right way.

NOTE: An .editorconfig file is included to assist with formatting. In order to take advantage of this functionality you will need to acquire the EditorConfig plug-in for your editor.

Naming

• Use CamelCase for everything.
• Local variables should start out with a lowercase letter.
• Class names are capitalized
• Prefix class member variables with m_, e.g. m_queue.
• Prefix static member variables with s_, e.g. s_instance.
• Functions are named in the Qt style, like Java's, without the 'get' prefix.
  • A getter is variable().
  • If it's a getter for a boolean, prefix with 'is', so isCondition().
  • A setter is setVariable( arg ).

Includes

Header includes should be listed in the following order:

• own header,
• Calamares includes,
• includes for Qt-based libraries,
• Qt includes,
• other includes.

They should also be sorted alphabetically for ease of locating them.

Includes in a header file should be kept to the absolute minimum, as to keep compile times short. This can be achieved by using forward declarations instead of includes, like class QListView;.

Example:

#include "Settings.h"

#include "CalamaresApplication.h"
#include "utils/CalamaresUtils.h"
#include "utils/Logger.h"
#include "YamlUtils.h"

#include <QDir>
#include <QFile>

#include <yaml-cpp/yaml.h>

Use include guards, not #pragma once.

C++ tips

All C++11 features are acceptable, and the use of new C++11 features is encouraged when it makes the code easier to understand and more maintainable.

The use of nullptr is preferred over the use of 0 or NULL.

For Qt containers it is better to use Qt's own foreach. For all other containers, the range-based for syntax introduced with C++11 is preferred (see this blog post).

When re-implementing a virtual method, always add the override keyword.

Try to keep your code const correct. Declare methods const if they don't mutate the object, and use const variables. It improves safety, and also makes it easier to understand the code.

For the Qt signal-slot system, the new (Qt5) syntax is to be preferred because it allows the compiler to check for the existence of signals and slots. As an added benefit, the new syntax can also be used with tr1::bind and C++11 lambdas. For more information, see the Qt wiki.

Example:

connect( m_next, &QPushButton::clicked, this, &ViewManager::next );

connect( m_moduleManager, &Calamares::ModuleManager::modulesLoaded, [this]
{
    m_mainwindow->show();
});

Debugging

Use cDebug() and cLog() from utils/Logger.h. You can pass a debug-level to either macro (1 is debugging, higher is less important). Use cLog() for warning messages. It is recommended to add WARNING as the first part of a warning message.

For log messages that are continued across multiple calls to cDebug(), in particular listing things, conventional formatting is as follows:

• End the first debug message with ..
• Indent following lines with ..

Commit Messages

Keep commit messages short(-ish) and try to describe what is being changed as well as why. Use the commit keywords for GitHub, especially FIXES: to auto-close issues when they are resolved.

For functional changes to Calamares modules or libraries, try to put [modulename] in front of the first line of the commit message.

For non-functional changes to infrastructure, try to label the change with the kind of change, e.g. CMake or i18n or Documentation.