[uracoli-devel] a word about coding style

[Axel Wachtler]

Hallo all,

in the last time various coding styles clash in the repository.
So lets find a good rule set, that makes the external code reader
the life easier to understand wtf is going on ;-)


1) Overall File layout

- In the templates directory there preconfigured skelettons
  for each file. If you find, that they are sub optimal, lets discuss.
- Overall line width should be 80 characters, thats a standard in
  printing most Ascii-Printing applications.

2) Spaces vs. tabs.

- For Python code we agreed to 4 spaces. All other attempts
  can cause funny bug effects.
- For C-Code I would prefer the same (rather the spaces),
  because:
    - tab width config is different in each editor,
    - mostly tab width is 8 spaces, which leads to run easily
      out of the 80 character column border.
    - modern hard disks can handle easily 3 more bytes

3) Curly braces on new lines.
- I would prefer:
   if (foo == bar)
   {
        foo = 42;
   }
  rather then
   if (foo == bar){
        foo = 42;
   }
  imho opininion you the block borders can be better tracked
  if the opening brace is on a seperate line.

- In order to avoid pitfalls, single line blocks
  should not be used:
   if (foo == bar)
        foo = 42;
   else
        bar = 42;
  Replace the above code by

   if (foo == bar)
   {
        foo = 42;
   }
   else
   {
        bar = 42;
   }


Cheers, Axel