Rivendellaudio/CODINGSTYLE

This is the CODINGSTYLE file for the Rivendell package.


OVERVIEW:

Rivendell is a Free Software project to develop a radio broadcast automation
system.  This file, CODINGSTYLE, describes how to get the Rivendell code,
coding style guidelines for writing new code, how to submit patches to be
incorporated into the official Rivendell CVS repository, and other code related
information.  General info on the Rivendell project can be found at the
http://www.rivendellaudio.org/ web page and also in the README and INSTALLATION
files.  



CODING STYLE GUIDELINES:
Please try to write code that fits with the formating style already present.
Some good basic guidelines:

   LINE LENGTH -- Should be short enough to fit onto an eighty character line
                  without wrapping.  This applies to ChangeLog 
                  entries too!  While it's not always possible to follow this 
                  rule (quoted literal strings being one place in particular 
                  where it is sometimes necessary to violate it), sticking 
                  with it wherever possible makes life much easier for those 
                  using character mode editing sessions.

   INDENTATION -- Should be two characters per level.

   CLASS NAMES -- Should have the initial letter of each word capitalized, 
                  e.g. 'ThisIsMyClass'.  If the class is part of librd, the
                  name should be prefaced with the uppercase letters 'RD', 
                  e.g. 'RDThisIsMyClass'.

  METHOD NAMES -- Names of class methods should follow the general style used
                  by Qt.  A special convention for Rivendell is to reserve
                  names beginning with an uppercase letter for private classes
                  only.

VARIABLE NAMES -- Class variables should be prefaced with a short base name 
                  that is common to all, followed by an underscore.  For
                  example, the class 'MyClass' might use 'myclass_', as 
                  in 'myclass_foo1', 'myclass_foo2', etc.  *All* variables
                  should be lowercase only, with uppercase being reserved for
                  class and method names.

Doxygen is the code documenting system in place.  Doxygen style comments placed
in header files can then be processed to generate friendly code documentation.
More information on doxygen can be found here (
http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/ ).  
FIXME: doxygen code samples



CVS GENERAL INFO:

CVS allows multiple developers to work simultaneously on a project. CVS does
this by keeping a master version of the source code in a central repository on
the cvs.rivendellaudio.org server.  Each developer "checks out" a copy of the
source code to their personal workspace. This local copy of the source is
called a sandbox.  Developers test and work on the source in their sandboxes
until they reach a mile-point, such as implementing a new feature or fixing a
bug.  Developers can then create a patch or commit their changes back to the
central repository.  The CVS server auto-magically merges changes from multiple
developers together.  Other developers periodically update their sandboxes to
merge changes others have committed to the server.

Conflicts normally are prevented by developers communicating and by working on
different areas of the source code. It is important that only working code is
committed back into the repository.

Though CVS has one main program, cvs, that program has a lot of functionality
which is accessed by giving the program different commands. The general syntax
of the cvs program is:

    cvs CVS_OPTIONS COMMAND COMMAND_OPTIONS

A brief overview of CVS can be found online here (
http://techweb.rfa.org/grauf/cvs.html ).



CVS READ:

Any user can get anonymous read-only access to the CVS repository using the
pserver protocol.  The module one wishes to check out must be specified as the
module-name (ex: rivendell).  cvs.rivendellaudio.org is configured with the
username "cvs" and the password "cvs".  Access via the pserver protocol
requires that a user login/logout.

    cvs -d:pserver:cvs@cvs.rivendellaudio.org:/home/cvs/cvsroot login
    cvs -d:pserver:cvs@cvs.rivendellaudio.org:/home/cvs/cvsroot checkout rivendell
    cvs -d:pserver:cvs@cvs.rivendellaudio.org:/home/cvs/cvsroot logout




SUBMITTING PATCHES:

Contributions of patches with fixes or enhancements are welcome.  Posting a
patch to the rivendell programmer mailing list (
rivendell-prog@rivendellaudio.org
http://www.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-prog ) is the best
approach for anyone to contribute to the project.  Established Rivendell
programmers can then review the patch and apply it to the official CVS tree.
Users who contribute significant patches over time may earn the privilege of
CVS write access.

The cvs diff command may be used to generate patches from a CVS sandbox.  This
allows for a user to checkout a cvs sandbox and make changes as needed by
directly editing the files checked out.  When done making changes, the cvs
utility can generate the differences, in patch file format, of the sandbox
version to the repository version of a file.  Run the following commands from
within the sandbox.

    # see changes made to sandbox against what was checked out from the
    # repository
    cvs diff FILE

    # see the difference between two versions of a file in the repository
    cvs diff -rVERSION_NUMBER -rVERSION_NUMBER FILE

Additional flags, such as "-u" can be added to produce a "unified context"
style diff.  Similarly the output redirector can be used to send the patch to a
file (which can then be emailed to the mailing list).   A sample command
follows:

    cvs diff -u FILE > /tmp/FILE_bugfix_2007.03.26.patch



CVS WRITE:

Contributors who have write access to the Rivendell CVS repository must use
Secure Shell (ssh) as the secure transport for all non-anonymous CVS access.

To get this set up, you will need to generate a public key and send it to
Federico Grau <grauf@rfa.org> and the sysadmin team <sysadmins@rfa.org> at
Radio Free Asia (RFA), along with the username one wishes to use.  As an
example of how to create a public key, use the following command:

	ssh-keygen -t dsa

This should prompt you for the base filename to put the public and private keys
in, as well as a passphrase (be sure to use a secure one).  Assuming that the
default filenames were accepted, you should then have the following two files
in '~/.ssh/':

	id_dsa
	id_dsa.pub

The 'id_dsa.pub' file is the one that gets sent to don Fede.  The other is your
secret key, and should be guarded accordingly.  You will need this key every
time you access the CVS archive using your selected username.  Once (RFA) has
set up your account, all you will need to do is change the CVSROOT string in
your environment or set the cvs command to point to the new server.  The form
of the environment string and a sample checkout command follow:

	export CVSROOT=:ext:<username>@cvs.rivendellaudio.org:/home/cvs/cvsroot
    cvs checkout rivendell

A sample checkout command that does not use the environment variable follows:

    cvs -d:ext:<username>@cvs.rivendellaudio.org:/home/cvs/cvsroot checkout rivendell

You should now be able to checkout, update and commit material as before, the
only difference being that CVS will prompt you for the passphrase of your
private key each time you access the archive.  As a convenience the
ssh-agent(1) and ssh-add(1) utilities can be used to securely hold private keys
used for public key authentication without repeatedly prompting for
passphrases.


CVS WRITE COMMIT CHECKLIST:

Before committing changes back to the Rivendell CVS repository the following
guidelines should be completed:

1) Successful update of CVS without conflicts.
2) Successful compile of CVS without errors.
3) Update the ChangeLog file at the base of the Rivendell source code tree.
   The format of the ChangeLog file has the most recent changes at the bottom
   of the file.  Entries start with a date stamp and have a format like:

    YYYY-MM-DD [HH:MM TIMEZONE] NAME <EMAIL>
    * Description of change

    A couple examples follow:
    2007-01-09 19:00 EST Federico Grau <grauf@rfa.org> <donfede@casagrau.org>
	* lib/rdcart.cpp lib/rdcut.cpp rdcatch/rdcatch.cpp; corrected i18n 
        bug by replacing use of QT shortDayName() with libradio 
        RGetShortDayNameEN() which will always return english day names 
        regardless of configured locale.

    2007-02-23 Fred Gleason <fredg@paravelsystems.com>
	* Modified the code in 'lib/rdimport_audio.cpp' to use the
	'RDCart::setMetadata()' and 'RDCut::setMetadata()' methods.
4) CVS Commit of the files changed using the ChangeLog snippet.