KOrganizer Coding Style

This document describes the basic guidelines for hacking on KOrganizer, libkcal and libkabc.

Formatting

• No Tabs
• Indent with 2 spaces
• A line must not have more than 80 chars
• If the arguments of a function don't fit into the 80 chars, start a new line and align the additional arguments with the first one.
• Put spaces between operators and arguments
• Put spaces between brackets and arguments of functions
• For pointer and reference variable declarations put a space between the type and the * or & and no space before the variable name.
• For if, else, while and similar statements put the brackets on the same line as the statement
• Function and class definitions have their brackets on separate lines

void MyClass::myFunction( MyPointer *pointer, MyReference &ref,
                          Argl *oerx )
{
  if ( blah == false ) {
    blubbVariable = arglValue;
  } else {
    blubbVariable = oerxValue;
  }
}

Header Formatting

• General formatting rules apply
• Access modifiers are indented
• Put curly brackets of class definitions on its own line
• Double inclusion protection defines are all upper case letters and are composed of the namespace (if available), the classname and a H suffix separated by underscores
• Inside a namespace there is no indentation

#ifndef XKJ_MYCLASS_H
#define XKJ_MYCLASS_H

namespace XKJ {

class MyClass
{
  public:
    MyClass();

  private:
    int mMyInt;
};

}

#endif

API docs

• Each public function must have a Doxygen compatible comment in the header
• Use C-style comments without additional asterisks
• Comments should be grammatically correct, e.g. sentences start with uppercase letters and end with a full stop
• Be concise

  /**
    This function makes tea.

    @param cups number of cups.
    @result tea
  */
  Tea *makeTea( int cups );

Class and File Names

• Put classes in files, which have the same name as the class, but only lower-case letters
• Designer-generated files should have a name classname_base.ui and should contain a class called ClassnameBase
• Classes inheriting from designer-generated classes have the same name as the generated class, but without the Base suffix

Class and Variable Names

• For class, variable, function names separate multiple words by upper-casing the words preceded by other words
• Class names start with an upper-case letter
• Function names start with a lower-case letter
• Variable names start with a lower-case letter
• Member variables of a class start with "m" followed by an upper-case letter

Misc

• Use true and false instead of TRUE and FALSE. These are the C++ keywords after all.
• A null pointer is 0, not 0l, 0L or NULL. Once again, this is C++, not C.