openafs/CODING

Notes on Coding Standards/Requirements for OpenAFS Source
=========================================================

This document covers the rules for coding style, lists the dependencies
needed to build from source, covers how we use git and gerrit for
development and code review, gives guidelines for what we expect code
review to cover, and discusses how we handle compiler warnings.

Prototyping and Style
=====================

We have an official style for C code.  Please use it.  If you have gnu indent
2.2.9 or later you can format new files for this style with the following
options:

-npro -nbad -bap -nbc -bbo -br -ce -cdw -brs -ncdb -cp1 -ncs -di2 -ndj -nfc1
-nfca -i4 -lp -npcs -nprs -psl -sc -nsob -ts8

but since historic compliance with the style has been poor, caution is
needed when operating on existing files.  It is often suitable to do an
initial style cleanup commit before making sweeping changes to a given
file, and otherwise try to accommodate the prevailing style in the file
when making minor changes.

The style for non-C code varies.  Makefiles must use literal tabs to
indent rule bodies, but use spaces for any additional indentation
needed.  Plain text files (such as this one) should use spaces for
indentation, with a 4-space indent as the default when one is needed.
Other cases will be added here as they are encountered and a consensus
determined for how to handle them.

Prototypes for all source files in a given dir DDD should be placed
in the file DDD/DDD_prototypes.h. All externally used (either API
or used by other source files) routines and variables should be
prototyped in this file.

The prototypes should be a full prototype, with argument and return
types. (That is, they should not generate a warning with
gcc -Wstrict-prototypes.)

Format of the prototype files should look like:

	Standard Copyright Notice

	#ifndef AFS_SRC_DDD_PROTO_H
	#define AFS_SRC_DDD_PROTO_H

	/* filename.c */
	prototypes

	/* filename.c */
	prototypes

	#endif /* AFS_SRC_DDD_PROTO_H */

In most of the existing prototypes, the define is DDD_PROTOTYPES_H, which is
probably ok as well.

The declaration of the routines should be done in ANSI style. If at some
later date, it is determined that prototypes don't work on some platform
properly, we can use ansi2knr during the compile.

	rettype
	routine(argtype arg)
	{

	}

All routines should have a return type specified, void if nothing returned,
and should have (void) if no arguments are taken.

Header files should not contain macros or other definitions unless they
are used across multiple source files.

All routines should be declared static if they are not used outside that
source file.

Compiles on gcc-using machines should strive to handle using
-Wstrict-prototypes -Werror (this may take a while).

Routines shall be defined in source prior to use if possible, and
prototyped in block at top of file if static.

API documentation in the code should be done using Qt-style Doxygen
comments.

If you make a routine or variable static, be sure and remove it from
the AIX .exp files.

It's recommended to configure with --enable-checking to activate the
compiler warning flags that the codebase complies with.

Multiple line comment blocks should begin with only /* on one line and
end with only */ on one line.

Example:

	/*
	 * Multiple line comment blocks should be formatted
	 * like this example.
	 */

Do not use braces on one-line if and loop statements (but if one branch of
a multi-branch conditional needs braces, use braces for all branches).

Use:

	if (some_condition)
	    do_some_action();
	else
	    do_something_else();

	while (some_condition)
	    do_something();

Instead of:

	if (some_condition) {
	    do_some_action();
	}

	while (some_condition) {
	    do_something();
	}

In switch statements, to fall through from one case statement to another, use
AFS_FALLTHROUGH to mark the intentional fall through.  Do not use fall through
comments (e.g. /* fallthrough */), as some compilers do not recognize them and
will flag the case statement with an implied fallthrough warning.

Use:

    switch (x) {
    case 1:
        do_something();
        AFS_FALLTHROUGH;
    case 2:
        do_something_else();
        AFS_FALLTHROUGH;
    default:
        do_some_action();
    }

Instead of using fallthrough comments:

    switch (x) {
    case 1:
        do_something();
        /* fallthrough */
    case 2:
        do_something_else();
        /* fallthrough */
    default:
        do_some_action();
    }

Or not marking the fall through:

   switch (x) {
    case 1:
        do_something();
    case 2:
        do_something_else();
    default:
        do_some_action();
    }

Dependencies required to build OpenAFS from source
==================================================

The following packages are required to build all of the OpenAFS code
from source on various operating systems:

On Debian:
- autoconf, automake, bison, comerr-dev, cpio, flex, libkrb5-dev,
  libncurses5-dev, libpam0g-dev, libxml2-utils, perl, pkg-config;
- libfuse-dev (for the FUSE-based user-mode client);
- dblatex, docbook-xsl, doxygen, xsltproc (for documentation);
- debhelper, dkms, dh-dkms (to build the Debian packages)

On FreeBSD:
- autoconf, automake, libtool;
- fusefs-libs, pkgconf (for the FUSE-based user-mode client);
- perl, dblatex, docbook-xsl, libxslt, python, ruby, zip (for documentation)

In addition, FreeBSD systems require kernel sources and a configured kernel
build directory (see section "FreeBSD Notes" in the README file).

Build System
============

Do not use $< for non-pattern rules in any cross-platform dir as it
requires a reasonable make that is not available on all systems.

Do not have build rules that build multiple targets. Make doesn't seem able
to handle this, and it interferes with -j builds. (In particular, build the
rxgen targets individually and not using the flags for building all the files
in one shot.)

Try to test builds using gmake -j # MAKE="gmake -j #", it seems like a good
way to find missing or order-dependent dependency rules. (Is there a better
way to do this?)

GIT Usage
=========

*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING*
The Git tree may not always have code which can currently be built.
While every effort is made to keep the head of the tree buildable,
you may at any time find yourself between commits and hence have a tree
which does not build, or worse, causes more serious problems!

Do not use the Git tree unless you know what you're doing.

Git checkouts do not include files generated by autoconf. You can
run regen.sh (at the top level) to create these files. You will need
to have autoconf and automake installed on your system.

Summary
-------

Browse:  http://git.openafs.org/
Clone:   git clone git://git.openafs.org/openafs.git

Step-by-step
------------

1. Obtain the Git software. If you are using a system with a standard
   software repository, Git may already be available as a package named
   something like git or git-core.  Otherwise, go to http://git-scm.com/

2. Run the command:

   % git clone git://git.openafs.org/openafs.git

   This will download the full repository and leave a checked-out tree in
   a subdirectory of the current directory named openafs. The repository
   itself is in the .git subdirectory of that directory.

   WARNING: The repository is approximately 86MiB currently and will only
   grow, so it may take some time to download the first time over a slow
   network connection.

3. Generate the additional required files:

   % cd openafs
   % ./regen.sh

The current development series is in the branch named master. The stable
releases are on separate branches named something like
openafs-stable_<version> with a separate branch for each major stable
release series. Use git branch -a to see a full list of branches.

OpenAFS uses the Gerrit code review system to review and merge all changes
to OpenAFS. More details are at:

    http://wiki.openafs.org/GitDevelopers/

including more detailed Git instructions.

It's by far preferred to use Gerrit to submit code changes, but if you
can't for whatever reason, you can instead open a bug and submit a patch
that way. Do this by sending mail to openafs-bugs@openafs.org with the
patch attached. But please use Gerrit if you can; patches sent in as bugs
will have to be forwarded to Gerrit by someone else, and it's easier for
everyone if you can enter them into Gerrit yourself.

Backport policy
---------------
All patches should land on master first, unless the patch fixes a bug
that only exists in the stable branch.

Once a patch has been accepted into master, anyone can propose
backports to stable branches.  It is preferred to check with the
Stable Release Manager before doing so, though, as that will give
an opportunity to check where in the stack of pending changes any
new addition should go.

When cherry-picking a commit from another branch, please append a
"cherry picked from" section in your commit message. You'll also need
a separate Change-ID for Gerrit to recognize this as a separate
change. One workflow to do this:

1) Use "git cherry-pick -ex" to pick your commits onto another branch.
   The -x option will append the appropriate "cherry picked from"
   message, and the -e option will open your editor for you to edit
   the commit message.
2) In your editor, delete the existing Change-ID line. Save and quit.
3) Run "git commit --amend", saving and quitting again. Git will run
   the commit hook and generate a new Change-ID for Gerrit.

Code Review Guidelines
======================

OpenAFS's use of Gerrit imposes a requirement that all changes undergo
code review prior to being merged to any branch, whether it be master or
a stable release branch.  The following guidelines discuss what the
scope of that review is expected to cover.  All of the points need to be
addressed by some reviewer, though not necessarily by the same reviewer.
When doing a review that only addresses some of these topics, indicate
in the review comment which portions were/were not done.

What does the change claim to do?
---------------------------------

This is often taken for granted, but in order to review a change we have
to know what it is trying to do (so that we can tell if it successfully
does so).  In our Gerrit-based workflow, this should be in the commit
message itself, but a patch attached to a bug or email may not have that
additional context.  If the change is fixing a bug, the bug report can
be expected to give some description of the issue being fixed.  In
addition to the sense of "what" is expected to change, a reviewer also
expects to know the "why" behind the change.  This becomes important
when assessing if this change is the right thing to do (see below).

At this part of the review, it's enough to ensure that the what and why
are documented and seem plausible.

Does the change do what it claims to do?
----------------------------------------

With the newfound knowledge of the goal of the change, it becomes possible
to assess whether it achieves that goal.  Follow through the "normal" or
"success" path of the new/changed code and scrutinize what it _actually_
does.  As you do this, strive to discern differences between the actual
behavior and the intended behavior -- does it live up to what was
advertised?

If the actual changes have more things than the stated goal, that may be
a sign that there are unrelated changes included -- it is often best to
ask to split these into a separate commit (but if not, they should be
acknowledged in the commit message as intended inclusions).  It is also
okay to ask for mechanical or similarly repetitive changes to be broken
out into dedicated commits (so that the reviewer would just
independently reproduce the mechanical change and compare the resulting
tree).

Having looked at the normal path, it's then time to look at the
not-normal path.  Error cases, edge cases, look for these wherever you
can and see if the code is going to do the right thing in those
scenarios.  Try to spot any copy/paste issues in this phase as well --
if we are doing conceptually the same thing in more than one instance,
check that each instance is actually touching the fields appropriate for
that instance.  Sometimes the difference is just a single character, and
it's easy to miss (sometimes the copy/paste has been cleaned up once on
a given line but needed to be cleaned up twice).  Is there a cleanup
handler that should be jumped to?  Locks or other state that need to be
released?  It is generally reasonable to assume that the adjacent error
cases/early returns are correct, and only examine what has changed
between that call site and the one you're looking at.  Check for edge
cases -- if there are conditionals against a specific constant, verify
the expected behavior when the input is that value/length, as well as
just above and just below.  This holds especially for string lengths
(e.g., in PRNAMEs the length bound need not account for a trailing NUL)
but checking for edge cases is always important.

Does the change not do something it should be doing?
----------------------------------------------------

If the goal of the change is to be comprehensive about doing something
(within a given scope), check that it has actually changed all the
places that need to change.  It can take a bit of creativity to be able
to write an efficient check for this -- sometimes just searching on the
API name is sufficient, but maybe there is a specific constant (for port
number, AFS service number, a given data field's length, etc.) that
would apply,  This is probably going to require a lot of manual
inspection; `${PAGER} $(git grep -l ${PATTERN})` followed by a search in
each file to find the relevant instance(s) is a useful technique.

Do NOT just rely on the compiler to detect incompatible/missing APIs --
we have code that is conditionally compiled based on architecture and
environment, and we also want to ensure that we find relevant comments,
tests, and documentation that might be exercising the interface in
question.

Check for comments/documentation for the affected areas of the code.
Are there any comments that have become stale and need to be changed,
but are not changed?  Unless the goal of the change is to fix a bug and
restore the documented behavior, if the behavior is changing, we should
expect the documentation (if present) to be changing as well.  (If there
is no documentation, consider adding some.)

Are there related functions or logic that should be getting a similar
change to it?  See above about conditionally compiled code -- sometimes
we have multiple implementations of a given API depending on the
environment or architecture, and often (but not always) when we need to
change one, we need to change others.  A network API may have multiple
versions as it has evolved over time; learn about the intended
differences between generations of the API to determine which one(s)
should be getting a given change.  If fixing a bug (especially when
security-relevant), try to generalize or abstract the nature of the fix
to see if there are other places where an analogous fix would apply.
Returning uninitialized data to a network caller is the classic example
here, but this can arise in many ways.

Does the change not do what it claims to not do?
------------------------------------------------

If there is supposed to be no functional change, is that true?
If a given class of behavior/logic is supposed to be unmodified, trace
through the code and confirm that that's the case.

Is that the right thing to do?
------------------------------

This question is a bit open-ended and sometimes hard to apply in
practice, but it's usually worth taking a step back and thinking about
what problem the change is trying to solve, whether it could be solved
some other way, and whether solving a different problem would be more
appropriate.  For example, rather than trying to optimize an existing
API at the cost of very convoluted logic, maybe there is a simpler API
or different data structure to achieve the overall goal that has a
different overall structure.  Contrariwise, though, changing the
behavior of a network API is pretty complicated to get right, and a
local adjustment may be more worthwhile.

Style and Standard Compliance
-----------------------------

This is sometimes done in passing during an earlier stage of the review,
but always make a point to consider whether the changes conform to the
project's style guidelines.  New code should conform to the project (or
prevailing) style, and generally we should fix the style when making
substantive changes to a given line.  Often we will fix style of
adjacent lines as well, if there are not too many, but it's a judgement
call -- if the focus of the change becomes more about style than
bugfixes, it's probably time for a separate cleanup commit.  It's also
important to think about whether the change conforms to the language
specification; we officially target C89 plus a handful of extensions
(though it may be simpler to reason about it as C99 minus a handful of
features).  The precise list of extensions over C89 that we use is a
work in progress, but includes (and will be updated as encountered):
- the long long int type
- designated initializers
- the __func__ predefined macro
If we're using additional language extensions or more modern
features, they need to be scoped to a file/situation where we can
guarantee they are available.

We must always try to avoid undefined behavior (though there are
existing cases where we do potentially trigger it).

Our network and userspace/kernel APIs need to conform to any relevant
standards or specifications that apply.  We cannot unilaterally change
existing RPC-L (the .xg files processed by rxgen), and the scope for
adding new things is limited.  When we add new pioctls, they have to
come from the OpenAFS-specific range (i.e., be 'O' pioctls).  Com_err
codes in .et files are generally managed by the central.org registrar,
etc.

Documentation
-------------

New APIs should get documented via at least doxygen comments attached to
their implementation.  Changes to CLI commands require man page changes.
New public APIs should also get man pages.  The reviewer should check
that these are being done.

If the change is modifying the behavior of existing functionality that
has documentation, update the documentation accordingly.  (Don't forget
the HISTORY section of man pages!)  If there is not existing
documentation, the code review is a good opportunity to ask if
documentation should be added, but the answer to that question will vary
on the specifics of the case in question.

Test Coverage
-------------

The current test coverage in the tree is very sparse.  If adding to or
changing the behavior of an area of the code that does have some test
coverage, add tests for the new/changed behavior.  If fixing a bug, add
a regression test.  It is a good idea to confirm that the (new) test
fails with the code change reverted, though sometimes this is
complicated enough to be an unreasonable burden on the reviewer.

For areas of the tree that do not have existing code coverage, we should
consider adding some.  It's good for the reviewer to ask (and consider
themself) what level of effort would be involved in adding test coverage
for this part of the code and whether we should put that effort in at
this time.  The answer may be "not worth it right now", though.

Warnings
========

OpenAFS Warning detection
-------------------------

There's been a concerted effort over the last few years, by many developers,
to reduce the number of warnings in the OpenAFS tree. In an attempt to
prevent warnings from creeping back in, we now have the ability to break the
build when new warnings appear.

This is only available for systems with gcc 4.2 or later or clang 3.2 or
later, and is disabled unless the --enable-checking option is supplied to
configure. Because we can't remove all of the warnings, we permit file by
file (and warning by warning) disabling of specific warnings. The
--enable-checking=all option prevents
this, and errors for any file containing a warning.  (At present, using
--enable-checking=all will error out quite early in the build, so this
is only useful for developers attempting to clean up compiler warnings.)

Disabling warnings
------------------

If warnings are unavoidable in a particular part of the build, they may be
disabled in an number of ways.

You can disable a single warning type in a particular file by using GCC
pragmas. If a warning can be disabled with a pragma, then the switch to use
will be listed in the error message you receive from the compiler. Pragmas
should be wrapped in IGNORE_SOME_GCC_WARNINGS, so that they aren't used
with non-gcc compilers, and can be disabled if desired. For example:
  #ifdef IGNORE_SOME_GCC_WARNINGS
  # pragma GCC diagnostic warning "-Wold-style-definition"
  #endif

It would appear that when built with -Werror, the llvm clang compiler will
still upgrade warnings that are suppresed in this way to errors. In this case,
the fix is to mark that warning as ignored, but only for clang. For example:
  #ifdef IGNORE_SOME_GCC_WARNINGS
  # ifdef __clang__
  #  pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wdeprecated-declarations"
  # else
  #  pragma GCC diagnostic warning "-Wdeprecated-declarations"
  # endif
  #endif

If the source cannot be changed to add a pragma, you might be able to use the
autoconf function AX_APPEND_COMPILE_FLAGS to create a new macro that disables
the warning and then use macro for the build options for that file. For an
example, see how the autoconf macro CFLAGS_NOIMPLICIT_FALLTHROUGH is defined and
used.

Finally, if there isn't a way to disable the specific warning, you will need to
disable all warnings for the file in question. You can do this by supplying
the autoconf macro @CFLAGS_NOERROR@ in the build options for the file. For
example:
  lex.yy.o : lex.yy.c y.tab.c
         ${CC} -c ${CFLAGS} @CFLAGS_NOERROR@ lex.yy.c

If you add a new warning inhibition, also add it to the list below.

Inhibited warnings
------------------

uss/lex.i            : fallthrough   : clang fallthrough, flex generated code
comerr/et_lex.lex.l  : fallthrough   : clang fallthrough, flex generated code
                                       pragma set to ignored where included in
                                       error_table.y
afs/afs_syscall.c    : old-style
                     : strict-proto
                     : all (ukernel) : syscall pointer issues
afsd/afsd_kernel.c   : deprecated    : daemon() marked as deprecated on Darwin
bozo/bosserver.c     : deprecated    : daemon() marked as deprecated on Darwin
bucoord/ubik_db_if.c : strict-proto  : ubik_Call_SingleServer
bucoord/commands.c   : all           : signed vs unsigned for dates
external/heimdal/hcrypto/validate.c
                     : all           : statement with empty body
external/heimdal/hcrypto/evp.c
                     : cast-function-type : Linux kernel build uses
                                            -Wcast-function-type
external/heimdal/hcrypto/evp-algs.c
                     : cast-function-type : Linux kernel build uses
                                            -Wcast-function-type
external/heimdal/krb5/crypto.c
                     : use-after-free: False postive on certain GCC compilers
kauth/admin_tools.c  : strict-proto  : ubik_Call
kauth/authclient.c   : strict-proto  : ubik_Call nonsense
libadmin/kas/afs_kasAdmin.c
                     : strict-proto  : ubik_Call nonsense
libadmin/samples/rxstat_query_peer.c
                     : all           : util_RPCStatsStateGet types
libadmin/samples/rxstat_query_process.c
                     : all           : util_RPCStatsStateGet types
libadmin/test/client.c
                     : all           : util_RPCStatsStateGet types
ubik/ubikclient.c    : strict-protos : ubik_Call
volser/vol-dump.c    : format        : afs_sfsize_t
rxkad/ticket5.c      : format-truncation : inside included file v5der.c in the
                                       function _heim_time2generalizedtime, the
                                       two snprintf calls raise
                                       format-truncation warnings due to the
                                       arithmetic on tm_year and tm_mon fields
rxkad/ticket5.c      : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
lwp/process.c        : dangling-pointer : Ignore the legitimate use of saving
                                       the address of a stack variable
src/rxkad/test/stress_c.c
                     : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
auth/authcon.c       : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
kauth/kaprocs.c      : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
kauth/krb_udp.c      : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
libafscp/afscp_util.c
                     : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES
tests/common/rxkad.c : deprecated    : hcrypto single-DES