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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md | 154 |
1 files changed, 144 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md b/doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md index f1c65850a4..dd21d6fd2c 100644 --- a/doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md +++ b/doc/HACKING/CodingStandards.md @@ -4,9 +4,10 @@ Coding conventions for Tor tl;dr: - Run configure with `--enable-fatal-warnings` - - Run `make check-spaces` to catch whitespace errors - Document your functions - Write unit tests + - Run `make check` before submitting a patch + - Run `make distcheck` if you have made changes to build system components - Add a file in `changes` for your branch. Patch checklist @@ -22,13 +23,25 @@ preference) Did you remember... - To build your code while configured with `--enable-fatal-warnings`? - - To run `make check-spaces` on your code? - To run `make check-docs` to see whether all new options are on the manpage? - To write unit tests, as possible? + - To run `make test-full` to test against all unit and integration tests (or + `make test-full-online` if you have a working connection to the internet)? + - To test that the distribution will actually work via `make distcheck`? - To base your code on the appropriate branch? - To include a file in the `changes` directory as appropriate? +If you are submitting a major patch or new feature, or want to in the future... + + - Set up Chutney and Stem, see HACKING/WritingTests.md + - Run `make test-full` to test against all unit and integration tests. + +If you have changed build system components: + - Please run `make distcheck` + - For example, if you have changed Makefiles, autoconf files, or anything + else that affects the build system. + How we use Git branches ======================= @@ -49,8 +62,17 @@ before it gets merged into maint, but that's rare. If you're working on a bugfix for a bug that occurs in a particular version, base your bugfix branch on the "maint" branch for the first supported series -that has that bug. (As of June 2013, we're supporting 0.2.3 and later.) If -you're working on a new feature, base it on the master branch. +that has that bug. (As of June 2013, we're supporting 0.2.3 and later.) + +If you're working on a new feature, base it on the master branch. If you're +working on a new feature and it will take a while to implement and/or you'd +like to avoid the possibility of unrelated bugs in Tor while you're +implementing your feature, consider branching off of the latest maint- branch. +_Never_ branch off a relase- branch. Don't branch off a tag either: they come +from release branches. Doing so will likely produce a nightmare of merge +conflicts in the ChangeLog when it comes time to merge your branch into Tor. +Best advice: don't try to keep an independent branch forked for more than 6 +months and expect it to merge cleanly. Try to merge pieces early and often. How we log changes @@ -74,17 +96,34 @@ you can use `git describe --contains <sha1 of commit>`. If at all possible, try to create this file in the same commit where you are making the change. Please give it a distinctive name that no other branch will use for the lifetime of your change. To verify the format of the changes file, -you can use `make check-changes`. +you can use `make check-changes`. This is run automatically as part of +`make check` -- if it fails, we must fix it before we release. These +checks are implemented in `scripts/maint/lintChanges.py`. + +Changes file style guide: + * Changes files begin with " o Header (subheading):". The header + should usually be "Minor/Major bugfixes/features". The subheading is a + particular area within Tor. See the ChangeLog for examples. + + * Make everything terse. + + * Write from the user's point of view: describe the user-visible changes + right away. + + * Mention configuration options by name. If they're rare or unusual, + remind people what they're for. + + * Describe changes in the present tense and in the imperative: not past. + + * Every bugfix should have a sentence of the form "Fixes bug 1234; bugfix + on 0.1.2.3-alpha", describing what bug was fixed and where it came from. + + * "Relays", not "servers", "nodes", or "Tor relays". When we go to make a release, we will concatenate all the entries in changes to make a draft changelog, and clear the directory. We'll then edit the draft changelog into a nice readable format. -To make sure that stuff is in the right format, we use -scripts/maint/lintChanges.py to check the changes files for -(superficial) validity. You can run this script on your own changes -files! - What needs a changes file? * A not-exhaustive list: Anything that might change user-visible @@ -93,6 +132,10 @@ What needs a changes file? rewrites. Anything about which somebody might plausibly wonder "when did that happen, and/or why did we do that" 6 months down the line. +What does not need a changes file? + + * Bugfixes for code that hasn't shipped in any released version of Tor + Why use changes files instead of Git commit messages? * Git commit messages are written for developers, not users, and they @@ -149,6 +192,79 @@ old C functions. Use `strlcat`, `strlcpy`, or `tor_snprintf/tor_asprintf` inste We don't call `memcmp()` directly. Use `fast_memeq()`, `fast_memneq()`, `tor_memeq()`, or `tor_memneq()` for most purposes. +Also see a longer list of functions to avoid in: +https://people.torproject.org/~nickm/tor-auto/internal/this-not-that.html + +Floating point math is hard +--------------------------- + +Floating point arithmetic as typically implemented by computers is +very counterintuitive. Failure to adequately analyze floating point +usage can result in surprising behavior and even security +vulnerabilities! + +General advice: + + - Don't use floating point. + - If you must use floating point, document how the limits of + floating point precision and calculation accuracy affect function + outputs. + - Try to do as much as possible of your calculations using integers + (possibly acting as fixed-point numbers) and convert to floating + point for display. + - If you must send floating point numbers on the wire, serialize + them in a platform-independent way. Tor avoids exchanging + floating-point values, but when it does, it uses ASCII numerals, + with a decimal point ("."). + - Binary fractions behave very differently from decimal fractions. + Make sure you understand how these differences affect your + calculations. + - Every floating point arithmetic operation is an opportunity to + lose precision, overflow, underflow, or otherwise produce + undesired results. Addition and subtraction tend to be worse + than multiplication and division (due to things like catastrophic + cancellation). Try to arrange your calculations to minimize such + effects. + - Changing the order of operations changes the results of many + floating-point calculations. Be careful when you simplify + calculations! If the order is significant, document it using a + code comment. + - Comparing most floating point values for equality is unreliable. + Avoid using `==`, instead, use `>=` or `<=`. If you use an + epsilon value, make sure it's appropriate for the ranges in + question. + - Different environments (including compiler flags and per-thread + state on a single platform!) can get different results from the + same floating point calculations. This means you can't use + floats in anything that needs to be deterministic, like consensus + generation. This also makes reliable unit tests of + floating-point outputs hard to write. + +For additional useful advice (and a little bit of background), see +[What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point +Arithmetic](http://floating-point-gui.de/). + +A list of notable (and surprising) facts about floating point +arithmetic is at [Floating-point +complexities](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/floating-point-complexities/). +Most of that [series of posts on floating +point](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/category/floating-point/) is +helpful. + +For more detailed (and math-intensive) background, see [What Every +Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point +Arithmetic](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html). + +Other C conventions +------------------- + +The `a ? b : c` trinary operator only goes inside other expressions; +don't use it as a replacement for if. (You can ignore this inside macro +definitions when necessary.) + +Assignment operators shouldn't nest inside other expressions. (You can +ignore this inside macro definitions when necessary.) + Functions not to write ---------------------- @@ -210,7 +326,25 @@ end-users that they aren't expected to understand the message (perhaps with a string like "internal error"). Option (A) is to be preferred to option (B). +Assertions In Tor +----------------- + +Assertions should be used for bug-detection only. Don't use assertions to +detect bad user inputs, network errors, resource exhaustion, or similar +issues. + +Tor is always built with assertions enabled, so try to only use +`tor_assert()` for cases where you are absolutely sure that crashing is the +least bad option. Many bugs have been caused by use of `tor_assert()` when +another kind of check would have been safer. + +If you're writing an assertion to test for a bug that you _can_ recover from, +use `tor_assert_nonfatal()` in place of `tor_assert()`. If you'd like to +write a conditional that incorporates a nonfatal assertion, use the `BUG()` +macro, as in: + if (BUG(ptr == NULL)) + return -1; Doxygen comment conventions --------------------------- |