Doc: Update Contributors Guide

[lilypond.git] / Documentation / devel / programming-work.itexi

@c -*- coding: us-ascii; mode: texinfo; -*-
@node Programming work
@chapter Programming work

@menu
* Introduction to programming:: 
* Programming without compiling::
* Finding functions::
* Code style::                  
@end menu


@node Introduction to programming
@section Introduction to programming 

blah blah

@node Programming without compiling
@section Programming without compiling

Much of the development work in LilyPond takes place by changing *.ly or
*.scm files.  These changes can be made without compiling LilyPond.  Such
changes are described in this section.


@subsection Modifying distribution files

Mving uch of LilyPond is written in Scheme or LilyPond input files.  These
files are interpreted when the program is run, rather than being compiled
when the program is built, and are present in all LilyPond distributions.
You will find .ly files in the ly/ directory and the Scheme files in the
scm/ directory.  Both Scheme files and .ly files can be modified and
saved with any text editor.  It's probably wise to make a backup copy of
your files before you modify them, although you can reinstall if the
files become corrupted.

Once you've modified the files, you can test the changes just by running
LilyPond on some input file.  It's a good idea to create a file that
demonstrates the feature you're trying to add.  This file will eventually
become a regression test and will be part of the LilyPond distribution.

@subsection Desired file formatting

Files that are part of the LilyPond distribution have Unix-style line
endings (LF), rather than DOS (CR+LF) or MacOS 9 and earlier (CR).  Make
sure you use the necessary tools ensure that Unix-style line endings are
preserved in the patches you create.

Tab characters should not be included in files for distribution.  All
indentation should be done with spaces.  Most editors have settings to
allow the setting of tab stops and ensuring that no tab characters are
included in the file.

@node Finding functions
@section Finding functions

When making changes or fixing bugs in LilyPond, one of the initial
challenges is finding out where in the code tree the functions to be
modified live.  With nearly 3000 files in the source tree,
trial-and-error searching is generally inefective. This section describes
a process for finding interesting code.

@subsection Using the ROADMAP

The file ROADMAP is located in the main directory of the lilypond source.
ROADMAP lists all of the directories in the LilPond source tree, along
with a brief description of the kind of files found in each directory.
This can be a very helpful tool for deciding which directories to search
when looking for a function.


@subsection Using grep to search

Having identified a likely subdirectory to search, the grep utility can
be used to search for a function name.  The format of the grep command is

@example 
grep functionName subdirectory/*
@end example

This command will search all the contents of the directory subdirectory/
and display every line in any of the files that contains functionName.

THe most likely directories to grep for function names are scm/ for
scheme files, ly/ for lilypond input (*.ly) files, and lily/ for C++
files.  


@subsection Using git grep to search

If you have used git to obtain the source, you have access to a
powerful tool to search for functions.  The command:

@example
git grep functionName
@end example

will search through all of the files that are present in the git
repository looking for functionName.  It also presents the results
of the search using @code{less}, so the results are displayed one page
at a time.

@subsection Searching on the git repository at Savannah

You can also use the equivalent of git grep on the Savannah server.

@itemize

@item
Go to http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=lilypond.git

@item
In the pulldown box that says commit, select grep.

@item
Type functionName in the search box, and hit enter/return

@end itemize

This will initiate a search of the remote git repository.



@node Code style
@section Code style 
@c email to wl@gnu.org when I get here.

@menu
@end menu

@subsection Handling errors

As a general rule, you should always try to continue computations,
even if there is some kind of error.  When the program stops, it
is often very hard for a user to pinpoint what part of the input
causes an error.  Finding the culprit is much easier if there is
some viewable output.

So functions and methods do not return errorcodes, they never
crash, but report a programming_error and try to carry on.

@subsection Languages

C++ and Python are preferred.  Python code should use PEP 8.

@subsection Filenames

Definitions of classes that are only accessed via pointers (*) or
references (&) shall not be included as include files.

@verbatim
   filenames

        ".hh"   Include files
             ".cc"      Implementation files
             ".icc"     Inline definition files
             ".tcc"     non inline Template defs

   in emacs:

             (setq auto-mode-alist
                   (append '(("\\.make$" . makefile-mode)
                        ("\\.cc$" . c++-mode)
                        ("\\.icc$" . c++-mode)
                        ("\\.tcc$" . c++-mode)
                        ("\\.hh$" . c++-mode)
                        ("\\.pod$" . text-mode)
                        )
                      auto-mode-alist))
@end verbatim

The class Class_name is coded in @q{class-name.*}

@subsection Indentation

Standard GNU coding style is used. In emacs:

@verbatim
             (add-hook 'c++-mode-hook
                  '(lambda() (c-set-style "gnu")
                     ))
@end verbatim

If you like using font-lock, you can also add this to your
@q{.emacs}:

@verbatim
             (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
             (setq c++-font-lock-keywords-3
                   (append
                    c++-font-lock-keywords-3
                    '(("\\b\\(a-zA-Z_?+_\\)\\b" 1 font-lock-variable-name-face) ("\\b\\(A-Z?+a-z_?+\\)\\b" 1 font-lock-type-face))
                    ))
@end verbatim


@subsection Classes and Types

@verbatim
             This_is_a_class
@end verbatim


@subsection Members

Member variable names end with an underscore:

@verbatim
     Type Class::member_
@end verbatim


@subsection Macros

Macro names should be written in uppercase completely.


@subsection Broken code

Do not write broken code.  This includes hardwired dependencies,
hardwired constants, slow algorithms and obvious limitations.  If
you can not avoid it, mark the place clearly, and add a comment
explaining shortcomings of the code.

We reject broken-in-advance on principle.

@subsection Naming


@subsection Messages

Messages need to follow Localization.


@subsection Localization

This document provides some guidelines for programmers write user
messages.  To help translations, user messages must follow
uniform conventions.  Follow these rules when coding for LilyPond.
Hopefully, this can be replaced by general GNU guidelines in the
future.  Even better would be to have an English (en_BR, en_AM)
guide helping programmers writing consistent messages for all GNU
programs.

Non-preferred messages are marked with `+'. By convention,
ungrammatical examples are marked with `*'.  However, such ungrammatical
examples may still be preferred.

@itemize

@item
Every message to the user should be localized (and thus be marked
for localization). This includes warning and error messages.

@item
Don't localize/gettextify:

@itemize
@item
`programming_error ()'s

@item
`programming_warning ()'s

@item
debug strings

@item
output strings (PostScript, TeX, etc.)

@end itemize

@item
Messages to be localised must be encapsulated in `_ (STRING)' or
`_f (FORMAT, ...)'. Eg:

@verbatim
      warning (_ ("need music in a score"));
      error (_f ("cannot open file: `%s'", file_name));
@end verbatim
    
In some rare cases you may need to call `gettext ()' by hand. This
happens when you pre-define (a list of) string constants for later
use. In that case, you'll probably also need to mark these string
constants for translation, using `_i (STRING)'. The `_i' macro is
a no-op, it only serves as a marker for `xgettext'.

@verbatim
      char const* messages[] = {
      _i ("enable debugging output"),
      _i ("ignore lilypond version"),
      0
      };

    
      void
      foo (int i)
      {
      puts (gettext (messages i));
      }
@end verbatim
    
See also `flower/getopt-long.cc' and `lily/main.cc'.

@item
Do not use leading or trailing whitespace in messages. If you need
whitespace to be printed, prepend or append it to the translated
message

@verbatim
      message (Calculating line breaks... + " ");
@end verbatim
    
@item
Error or warning messages displayed with a file name and line
number never start with a capital, eg,

@verbatim
        foo.ly: 12: not a duration: 3
@end verbatim
      
Messages containing a final verb, or a gerund (`-ing'-form) always
start with a capital. Other (simpler) messages start with a
lowercase letter

@verbatim
      Processing foo.ly...
      `foo': not declared.
      Not declaring: `foo'.
@end verbatim
    
@item
Avoid abbreviations or short forms, use `cannot' and `do not'
rather than `can't' or `don't'
To avoid having a number of different messages for the same
situation, we'll use quoting like this `"message: `%s'"' for all
strings. Numbers are not quoted:

@verbatim
      _f ("cannot open file: `%s'", name_str)
      _f ("cannot find character number: %d", i)
@end verbatim
    
@item
Think about translation issues. In a lot of cases, it is better to
translate a whole message. The english grammar mustn't be imposed
on the translator. So, instead of

@verbatim
      stem at  + moment.str () +  does not fit in beam
@end verbatim
    
have

@verbatim
      _f ("stem at %s does not fit in beam", moment.str ())
@end verbatim
    
@item
Split up multi-sentence messages, whenever possible. Instead of

@verbatim
      warning (_f ("out of tune!  Can't find: `%s'",
"Key_engraver"));
      warning (_f ("cannot find font `%s', loading default",
      font_name));
@end verbatim
    
rather say:

@verbatim
      warning (out of tune:;
      warning (_f ("cannot find: `%s', "Key_engraver"));
      warning (_f ("cannot find font: `%s', font_name));
      warning (_f ("Loading default font"));
@end verbatim
    
@item
If you must have multiple-sentence messages, use full punctuation.
Use two spaces after end of sentence punctuation. No punctuation
(esp. period) is used at the end of simple messages.

@verbatim
      _f ("Non-matching braces in text `%s', adding braces", text)
      Debug output disabled.  Compiled with NPRINT.
      _f ("Huh?  Not a Request: `%s'.  Ignoring.", request)
@end verbatim
    
@item
Do not modularise too much; words frequently cannot be translated
without context. It's probably safe to treat most occurences of
words like stem, beam, crescendo as separately translatable words.

@item
When translating, it is preferable to put interesting information
at the end of the message, rather than embedded in the middle.
This especially applies to frequently used messages, even if this
would mean sacrificing a bit of eloquency. This holds for original
messages too, of course.

@verbatim
      en: cannot open: `foo.ly'
      +   nl: kan `foo.ly' niet openen (1)
      kan niet openen: `foo.ly'*   (2)
      niet te openen: `foo.ly'*    (3)
@end verbatim

    
The first nl message, although grammatically and stylistically
correct, is not friendly for parsing by humans (even if they speak
dutch). I guess we'd prefer something like (2) or (3).

@item
Do not run make po/po-update with GNU gettext < 0.10.35

@end itemize