HACKING.md

Hacking on Calamares

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 - <http://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.

Formatting

• 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 &.
• for, if, else, while and similar statements put the brackets on the next line, although brackets are not needed for single statements.
• Function and class definitions have their brackets 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;

    foreach ( const QString& string, list )
        cDebug() << "Current string is " << string;

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

You can use the hacking/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.