DarkRadiant coding standards

Although DarkRadiant was forked from GTKRadiant, there are new coding standards which should be used for new code, in order to maximise readability for developers.

Naming conventions

• All new code should be in a namespace, such as ui for UI-related code or model for code dealing with models.
• Class names should begin with a capital letter and capitalise each word: RenderablePicoModel, TextMenuItem
• Classes represent "things", therefore they should be named after nouns not verbs: ModuleLoader rather than LoadModule.
• Each new class should be contained within its own file pair: MyClass is contained in MyClass.h and MyClass.cpp. This rule does not apply to tightly-bound local classes, such as a functor class which is used by only a single method in a .cpp file. It is also acceptable to define trivial data structures returned by methods in the header file declaring the method, if that data structure is not used elsewhere.
• Method names and local variables should start with a small letter.
• Member variables should begin with an underscore: _widget. Do not use the "m_name" convention in new code, as this is harder to read.

General code structure

• Always use Object-Oriented design methods wherever possible. Think in terms of objects which define methods to act on those objects, rather than C-style functions that process data structures passed as arguments. Non-member functions are OK for minor tasks, as long as they are within a namespace rather than at global scope.
• Always use STL or Boost objects, rather than home-grown reinventions of the same thing. Use std::string not CopiedString, and std::map in favour of HashedCache. Classes that use these home-grown versions should be modified so as not to use them if at all possible, and eventually they will be removed.
• Never use global variables.

Static variables

If a static variable is required, encapsulate it within a small method that returns a reference to the static, e.g.

MyObject& staticInstance() {
    static MyObject _instance;
    return _instance;
}

This ensures that the static instance will be initialised when the method is first called, which avoids problems with the undefinability of static initialisation.

Access

• All data members should be private, except in data structures which provide no methods (other than constructors).
• Members which need to be accessed externally should be provided with get/set methods.