Business object coding conventions

[Derek Atkins]

Rich Johnson <rjohnson at dogstar-interactive.com> writes:

> However, I will quibble with the 'documented in the files' part.
> What's there is pretty skimpy.  FWIW, I'm a fan of _explicit_
> declaration of conventions and expectations.  I've spent far too much
> time chasing down bugs ultimately attributable to misunderstood
> assumptions.

I dont think it's that challenging to divine that between foo.h and
fooP.h the latter is private.

>   AFAIK the conventions used are implicit and not documented, either
> in the code or elsewhere.  The 'private' aspect is documented  only in
> a few of the *P.h headers and the absence of any 'public' declarations
> implies public unless specified otherwise.    I agree that the pattern
> used for the most part matches that of basic opaque object programming
> (aka data abstraction/hiding for C)--but it isn't stated anywhere.

Eh..  Welcome to the world of open source projects that have had
multiple generations of developers.

> But now it's on the record;  so I'm happy  :-)

Oh, if documentation in email is sufficient, you didn't search well
enough.  I'm certainly this was mentioned on the -devel list several
years ago.

> There're also _two_ naming conventions at play:  the aforementioned
> StudlyCap  "*P.h",  and the "*-p.h" convention used for qof* objects.
> The use of one or another appears to be historical.   Is one preferred
> over the other for new work?  Or should one stick to the predominate
> convention for the directory at hand?

The latter, stick to the predominant convention of the directory.

Did you read the HACKING file?

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available