One of the topics discussed in an earlier thread today was code format standards or code style standards.Using tools that will allow us to automatically enforce a coding standard was suggested. Using these tools to convert existing source code from other JUMP "brands" to our style for OpenJUMP was also a suggestion.
I'm really excited that others would be interested in this type of consistency and quality for our source code of OpenJUMP. I don't want us to loose that momentum! However, I'm concerned about implementing such a code style standard for a couple of reasons: [1] I don't think we want to get into a situation where we are dictating what IDE, if any, our contributing developers use. I would want to make sure that any tools and/or plug-ins that we use for automatic code formatting were free from dependencies on a particular IDE. [2] Do we really need to have our contributing developers worry about where they put the curly brace in the code? As was mentioned in the discussion, I think there are other more important things we can do to improve the quality and usability of our code. I'm thinking of things like Javadoc comments, other source code comments, change logs, unit tests and the like. I'd much rather fight for a requirement that all public methods have an intelligent Javadoc comment or something similar to that, than push for a standard variable naming convention or rules geverning the placement of parentheses and curly braces. [3] How on Earth would we ever get our developers to agree on a common coding standard? I can just imagine the discussions: "Should all interfaces and exceptions should share a common prefix in their class name?" "Should we ever allow passing a method call as a parameter to a method call?" I just don't think we could all agree on this stuff, do you? I don't think it would be worth the bickering to me. Maybe we could just adopt an existing standard, but then we would all have to read an learn it, and it would probably be different from what we used at work, and we're probably to lazy to do it, and… In summary, if the source code a developer contributes is functional, and I can understand what it does when I read it, I am happy. Everything else is gravy. I know a lot of open source projects have a code style standard, but I think our community is too diverse and lacks the strong central authority necessary to make this level of control successful. I am still open to further discussion on this topic. :] If we can address some of these basic concerns I am more than willing to learn a new tool or coding style. When I say this I speak only for myself, not for the other developers or for the project iteself. The Sunburned Surveyor ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Jump-pilot-devel mailing list Jump-pilot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jump-pilot-devel
