curl/CONTRIBUTE

 Date: 1999-08-04

To Think About When Contributing Source Code

 This document is intended to offer some guidelines that can be useful to
 keep in mind when you decide to write a contribution to the project. This
 concerns new features as well as corrections to existing flaws or bugs.

Naming

 Try using a non-confusing naming scheme for your new functions and variable
 names. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that you should use the same as
 in other places of the code, just that the names should be logical,
 understandable and be named according to what they're used for.

Indenting

 Please try using the same indenting levels and bracing method as all the
 other code already does. It makes the source code a lot easier to follow if
 all of it is written using the same style. I don't ask you to like it, I
 just ask you to follow the tradition! ;-)

Commenting

 Comment your source code extensively. I don't see myself as a very good
 source commenter, but I try to become one. Commented code is quality code
 and enables future modifications much more. Uncommented code much more risk
 being completely replaced when someone wants to extend things, since other
 persons' source code can get quite hard to read.

General Style

 Keep your functions small. If they're small you avoid a lot of mistakes and
 you don't accidentaly mix up variables.

Non-clobbering All Over

 When you write new functionality or fix bugs, it is important that you
 don't fiddle all over the source files and functions. Remember that it is
 likely that other people have done changes in the same source files as you
 have and possibly even in the same functions. If you bring completely new
 functionality, try writing it in a new source file. If you fix bugs, try to
 fix one bug at a time and send them as separate patches.

Separate Patches Doing Different Things

 It is annoying when you get a huge patch from someone that is said to fix 511
 odd problems, but discussions and opinions don't agree with 510 of them - or
 509 of them were already fixed in a different way. Then the patcher needs to
 extract the single interesting patch from somewhere within the huge pile of
 source, and that gives a lot of extra work. Preferably, all fixes that
 correct different problems should be in their own patch with an attached
 description exactly what they correct so that all patches can be selectively
 applied by the maintainer or other interested parties.

Document

 Writing docs is dead boring and one of the big problems with many open
 source projects. Someone's gotta do it. It makes it a lot easier if you
 submit a small description of your fix or your new features with every
 contribution so that it can be swiftly added to the package documentation.

Write Access to CVS Repository

 If you are a frequent contributor, or have another good reason, you can of
 course get write access to the CVS repository and then you'll be able to
 check-in all your changes straight into the CVS tree instead of sending all
 changes by mail as patches. Just ask if this is what you'd want.