construct/doc/STYLE.md

How to CPP for IRCd

In the post-C++11 world it is time to leave C99+ behind and seriously consider C++ as C proper. It has been a hard 30 year journey to finally earn that, but now it is time. This document is the effective style guide for how Charybdis will integrate -std=gnu++17 and how developers should approach it.

C++ With Respect For C People

Remember your C heritage. There is nothing wrong with C, it is just incomplete. There is also no overhead with C++, that is a myth. If you write C code in C++ it will be the same C code. Think about it like this: if C is like a bunch of macros on assembly, C++ is a bunch of macros on C. This guide will not address any more myths and for that we refer you here.

Repeat the following mantra:

1. How would I do this in C?
2. Why is that dangerous, hacky, or ugly?
3. What feature does C++ offer to do it right?

This can be applied to many real patterns seen in C software which really beg for something C++ did to make it legitimate and proper. Examples:

• Leading several structures with the same member, then casting to that leading type to deal with the structure abstractly for container insertion. -> Think inheritance.
• Creating a structure with a bunch of function pointers, then having a user of the structure fill in the pointers with their own functionality. -> Think virtual functions.
• if statements that check for errors and goto some label at the bottom of a function under the normal return type. -> Think exceptions.

Encapsulation will be relaxed

To summarize, most structures will default to being fully public unless there is a very pressing reason to create a private section. Such a reason is not "the user could break something by touching this," instead it is "the user will only ever break something by touching this."

• Do not use the keyword class unless your sole intent is to have the members immediately following it be private.

• Using class followed by a public: label is nubile.

Direct initialization

Use = only for assignment to an existing object. Break your C habit right now. Use bracket initialization {} of all variables and objects. Fall back to parens () if brackets conflict with an initializer_list constructor (such as with STL containers) or if absolutely necessary to quash warnings about conversions.

• Do not put uninitialized variables at the top of a function and assign them later.

Quick note to preempt a confusion for C people: Initialization in C++ is like C but you don't have to use the =.

struct user { const char *nick; };
struct user you = {"you"};
user me {"me"};

• Use Allman style for complex/long initialization statements. It's like a function returning the value to your new object; it is easier to read than one giant line.

const auto sum
{
    1 + (2 + (3 * 4) + 5) + 6
};

Use full const correctness

const correctness should extend to all variables, pointers, arguments, and functions- not just "pointed-to" data. If it can be const then make it const and relax it later if necessary.

Use auto

Use auto whenever it is possible to use it; specify a type when you must. If the compiler can't figure out the auto, that's when you indicate the type.

RAII will be in full force

All variables, whether they're function-local, class-members, even globals, must always be under some protection at all times. There must be the expectation at absolutely any point including between those points everything will blow up randomly and the protection will be invoked to back-out the way you came. That is, essentially, the juice of why we are here.

This is really serious business. You have to do one thing at a time. When you move on to the next thing the last thing has to have already fully succeeded or fully failed. Everything is a transaction. Nothing in the future exists. There is nothing you need from the future to give things a consistent state.

• The program should be effectively reversible -- should be able to "go backwards" or "unwind" from any point. Think in terms of stacks, not linear procedures. This means when a variable, or member (a resource) first comes into scope, i.e. it is declared or accessible (acquired), it must be initialized to a completely consistent state at that point.

Imagine pulling down a window shade to hide the sun. As you pull down, the canvas unrolls from its spool at the top. Your goal is to hook the shade on to the nail at the bottom of the window: that is reaching the return statement. If you slip and let go, the shade will roll back up into the spool at the top: that is an exception.

What you can't do is prepare work on the way down which needs any further pulling to be in a consistent state and not leak. You might slip and let go at any time for any reason. A malloc() on one line and a free() following it is an example of requiring more pulling.

Indeed slipping and letting go is an accident -- but the point is that accidents happen. They're not always your fault, and many times are in other parts of the code which are outside of your control. This is a good approach for robust and durable code over long-lived large-scale projects.

Exceptions will be used

Wait, you were trolling "respect for C people" right? No. If you viewed the above section merely through the prism avoiding classic memory leaks, and can foresee how to now write stackful, reversible, protected programs without even calling free() or delete: you not only have earned the right, but you have to use exceptions. This is no longer a matter of arguing for or against if() statement clutter and checking return types and passing errors down the stack.

• Object construction (logic in the initialization list, constructor body, etc) is actual real program logic. Object construction is not something to just prepare some memory, like initializing it to zero, leaving an instance somewhere for further functions to conduct operations on. Your whole program could be running - the entire universe could be running - in some member initializer somewhere. The only way to error out of this is to throw, and it is perfectly legitimate to do so.

• Function bodies and return types should not be concerned with error handling and passing of such. They only cause and generate the errors.

• Try/catch style note: We specifically discourage naked try/catch blocks. In other words, most try-catch blocks are of the function-try-catch variety. The style is simply to piggyback the try/catch where another block would have been.

while(foo) try
{
    ...
}
catch(exception)
{
}

• We extend this demotion style of keywords to do as well, which should avoid having its own line if possible.

int x; do
{
    ...
}
while((x = foo());

Pointers and References

• The & or * prefixes the variable name; it does not postfix the type. This is evidenced by comma-delimited declarations. There is only one exception to this for universal references which is described later.

int a, &b{a}, *c{&b}, *const d{&b}, *const *const e{&c};

• Biblical maxim: Use references when you can, pointers when you must.

• Pass arguments by const reference const foo &bar preferably, non-const reference foo &bar if you must.

• Use const references even if you're not referring to anything created yet. const references can construct, contain, and refer to an instance of the type with all in one magic. This style has no sympathy for erroneously expecting that a const reference is not a local construction; expert C++ developers do not make this error. See reasons for using a pointer below.

• Passing by value indicates some kind of need for object construction in the argument, or that something may be std::move()'ed to and from it. Except for some common patterns, this is generally suspect.

• Passing to a function with an rvalue reference argument foo &&bar indicates something will be std::move()'ed to it, and ownership is now acquired by that function.

• In a function with a template template<class foo>, an rvalue reference in the prototype for something in the template void func(foo &&bar) is actually a universal reference which has some differences from a normal rvalue reference. To make this clear our style is to move the && like so void func(foo&& bar). This is actually useful because a variadic template foo template<class... foo> will require the prototype void func(foo&&... bar).

• Passing a pointer, or pointer arguments in general, indicates something may be null (optional), or to explicitly prevent local const construction which is a rare reason. Otherwise suspect.

• Avoid using references as object members, you're most likely just limiting the ability to assign, move, and reuse the object because references cannot be reseated; then the "big three" "big five" custom constructors have to be created and maintained, and it becomes an unnecessary mess.

Miscellaneous

• Prefer "locality" rather than "centrality." In other words, we keep things in as local of a scope or file as possible to where it is used.

• new and delete should rarely if ever be seen. This is more true than ever with C++14 std::make_unique() and std::make_shared().

• We allow some C-style arrays, especially on the stack, even C99 dynamic sized ones; there's no problem here, just be responsible.

• alloca() will not be used.

• C format strings are still acceptable. This is an IRC project, with heavy use of strings and complex formats and all the stringencies. We even have our own custom protocol safe format string library, and that should be used where possible.

• streams and standard streams are generally avoided in this project. We could have have taken the direction to customize C++'s stream interface to make it performant, but otherwise the streams are generally slow and heavy. Instead we chose a more classical approach with format strings and buffers -- but without sacrificing type safety with our RTTI-based fmt library.

• varargs are still legitimate. There are just many cases when template varargs, now being available, are a better choice; they can also be inlined.

  • Our template va_rtti is starting to emerge as a suitable replacement for any use of varags.

• When using a switch over an enum type, put what would be the default case after/outside of the switch unless the situation specifically calls for one. We use -Wswitch so changes to the enum will provide a good warning to update any switch.

• Prototypes should name their argument variables to make them easier to understand, except if such a name is redundant because the type carries enough information to make it obvious. In other words, if you have a prototype like foo(const std::string &message) you should name message because std::string is common and what the string is for is otherwise opaque. OTOH, if you have foo(const options &options, const std::string &message) one should skip the name for options & as it just adds redundant text to the prototype.

• Consider any code inside a runtime assert() statement to entirely disappear in optimized builds. If some implementations of assert() may only elide the boolean check and thus preserve the inner statement and the effects of its execution: this is not standard; we do not rely on this. Do not use assert() to check return values of statements that need to be executed in optimized builds.

Comments

• /* */ Multi-line comments are not normally used. We reserve this for debugging and temporary multi-line grey-outs. The goal for rarely using this is to not impede anybody attempting to refactor or grey-out a large swath of code.

• // Primary developer comment; used even on multiple lines.

• /// Documentation comment; the same style as the single line comment; the documentation is applied to code that follows the comment block.

• ///< Documentation comment; this documents code preceding the comment.

Documentation will be pedantic, windy and even patronizing

This is considered a huge anti-pattern in most other contexts where comments and documentation are minimal, read by experts, end up being misleading, tend to diverge from their associated code after maintenance, etc. This project is an exception. Consider two things:

1. This is a free and open source public internet project. The goal here is to make it easy for many-eyeballs to understand everything. Then, many-eyeballs can help fix comments which become misleading.

2. Most free and open source public internet projects are written in C because C++ is complicated with a steep learning curve. It is believed C++ reduces the amount of many-eyeballs. A huge number of contributions to these projects come from people with limited experience working on their "first project."

Therefor, writers of documentation will consider a reader which has encountered IRCd as their first project, specifically in C++. Patronizing explanations of common/standard C++ patterns and intricacies can be made.

Art & Tableaux

• Tab style is tabs before spaces. Tabs set an indentation level and then spaces format things at that level. This is one of the hardest styles to get right and then enforce, but it looks the best for everyone. The point here is that the tab-width becomes a personal setting -- nobody has to argue whether it's worth 2 or 4 or 8 spaces... Remember, tabs are never used to align things that would fall out of alignment if the tab-width changed.

Conventions

These are things you should know when mulling over the code as a whole. Importantly, knowing these things will help you avoid various gotchas and not waste your time debugging little surprises. You may or may not agree with some of these choices (specifically the lack of choices in many cases) but that's why they're explicitly discussed here.

Null termination

• We don't rely on null terminated strings. We always carry around two points of data to indicate such vectoring. Ideally this is a pair of pointers indicating the begin/end like an STL iterator range. string_view et al and the buffer:: suite work this way.

• Null terminated strings can still be used and we even still create them in many places on purpose just because we can.

• Null terminated creations use the BSD strl* style and not the strn* style. Take note of this. When out of buffer space, such an strl* style will always add a null to the end of the buffer. Since we almost always have vectoring data and don't really need this null, a character of the string may be lost. This can happen when creating a buffer tight to the length of an expected string without a + 1. This is actually the foundation of a case to move back to strn* style but it's not prudent at this time.

• Anything named print* like print(mutable_buffer, T) always composes null terminated output into the buffer. These functions usually return a size_t which count characters printed not including null. They may return a string_view/const_buffer of that size (never viewing the null).

Iteration protocols

When not using STL-iterators, you may encounter some closure/callback-based iterator functions. Usually that's a for_each(). If we want to break out of the loop, our conventions are as follows:

• find protocol for find() functions. The closure returns true to break the loop at that element, false to continue. The find() function itself then returns a pointer or reference to that element. If the end of the iteration is reached then a find() usually returns nullptr or throws an exception, etc.

• test protocol for test() functions (this has nothing to do with unit- tests or development testing). This is the same logic as the find protocol except the test() function itself returns true if the closure broke the loop by returning true, or false if the end of the iteration was reached.

• until protocol for until() functions. The closure "remains true 'till the end." When the end is reached, true is returned. The closure returns false to break the loop, and then false is returned from until() as well.

Overloads of for_each() may be encountered accepting closures that return void and others that return bool. The bool overloads use the until protocol as that matches the same logic in a for(; bool;) loop.