Re: Sometimes, old principles might still be good.

On 01/29/2013 03:50 AM, Reiner Karlsberg wrote:

> So, after spending a
> few days starting to dig into rather new source code regarding Rock, the
> beginning of an old fairy tail came to my mind:

> - Use a lot of comments.
> - Explicitly define every variable, and comment.
> - Data structures had a pre-defined layout,
> Similar naming conventions were used for executable code.

Squid coding guidelines and code reviews should and, for the most part,
do follow those principles IMO. Not all code has been written and
accepted using those principles though. Sometimes, we miss problems.
Sometimes, we have to chose between the lesser of two evils, primarily
due to lack of resources.

Personally, I agree with and try to follow the spirit of those
principles, including in my Rock work. Some of them have to be adjusted
as you move from assembly to C++ (e.g., "a lot of comments" is not
really the goal, "understandable code", for the lack of a better term, is).

Does Rock comply with Squid coding guidelines? It tries, but there are
many exceptions. Many of those exceptions stem from the fact that the
APIs and code structure that Rock had to use do not comply themselves.
For example, the fs/ and DiskIO/ directory structure and naming
conventions are ugly; the Store API has serious flaws (polishing Store
API is on my to-do list). Some exceptions were just due to shortcuts we
have taken, especially when copying ugly but-known-to-work code from
another Squid branch.

One important rule that you have not mentioned above is "be consistent".
That includes "be consistent with the code around you", which often
contradicts other rules. Balancing consistency and gradual code
improvement is very difficult, especially when dealing with a large body
of ugly code.

BTW, if you are interested in Rock, consider working with the Large Rock
branch on Launchpad. I hope that code will replace the current one soon
so if you want to work on significant improvements, it is best to base
them on Large Rock branch IMO.

If you have questions about Rock or Store in general, please do not
hesitate to ask here.

Thank you,

Alex.
Received on Tue Jan 29 2013 - 15:38:28 MST