Coding Style Guidelines

DataTransferKit developers follow a set of style guidelines and use the clang format tool to create a consistent appearance to all source code committed to the repository.

ClangFormat

ClangFormat (version 4.0) is used to check the C++ code formatting style in DTK. A pull request that does not comply will be rejected. Configure with -D DataTransferKit_ENABLE_ClangFormat=ON and do make format-cpp to apply the formatting style before your commit. Alternatively, run ctest -V -R check_format_cpp display the diff without applying the changes.

Style Guide

The following conventions are used in the code.

Names of classes, structs, and enumerations are camel case and capitalized:

class ExampleClassName {};

Function names are camel case and not capitalized:

void exampleFunctionName() const;

Variable names are lower case and have underscores to separate words:

double example_double_var;
std::vector<int> example_vec_var;

If a variable is class data prefixed with a _:

class ExampleClass
{
  public:
    int _a_public_var;
  private:
    double _class_double_var;
    std::vector<int> _example_vec_var;
  protected:
    std::string _a_protected_string;
};

Previously, the convention for class data was to prefix the variable name with d_ so this will be seen throughout the code. We will be transitioning to the _ prefix convention in future work and slowly transition existing code.

The clang-format tool described above enforces spacing, line breaks, and other general file formatting requirements. Header files are suffixed with .hpp and non-templated implementation files are suffixed with .cpp. Header guards are needed for all header files following the convention of DTK_CLASSNAME_HPP. For example:

#ifndef DTK_EXAMPLECLASS_HPP
#define DTK_EXAMPLECLASS_HPP

class ExampleClass
{
    // Class definition...
};

#endif