Tuleap coding standards¶

Internal conventions¶

• Use an indent of 4 spaces, with no tabs. This helps to avoid problems with diffs, patches, git history ...

• It is recommended to keep lines at approximately 85-100 characters long for better code readability.

• methodsInCamelCase()

• $variables_in_snake_case

• constants in UPPER_CASE

• public methods documented (at least @return statement)

• class documented (I'm responsible of…)

• One True Brace style

• No trailing whitespaces

  Note: Contributions SHOULD NOT add/fix features AND fix coding standard of a legacy file in the same review. The code WONT be accepted. If your eyes are bleeding, conform to coding standard in a dedicated review, then contribute your change.

Copyright & license¶

All source code files (php, js, bash, ...) must contain a page-level docblock at the top of each file. This header includes your copyright and a reference to the license GPLv2+ of the script.

/**
 * Copyright (c) <You>, <Year>. All rights reserved
 *
 * This file is a part of Tuleap.
 *
 * Tuleap is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Tuleap is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with Tuleap. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
 */

Adapt the copyright line to your situation.

Good quality code¶

Tuleap is a big (+600k LOC) and old (16 years) software and has probably an example of every existing bad designs that existed during those 16 years.

Yet, it’s not a fatality and we are on the way to, slowly and carefully clean things up. On our road toward a Clean Code, some motto might help you to make your design choices:

• Test your code; TDD (Test Driven Development) should be the default.
• Follow SOLID design principles.
• Don’t contribute STUPID code.

We also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with Code Smells as it might pop up during code reviews.