Re: Some issues with the codebase

[Federico Montesino Pouzols]

        Hi,...

On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 07:29:55PM +0200, Albert Strasheim wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> While looking at some of the code in Common C++, I've noticed a few 
> general issues that we might want to address.
> 
> Firstly, identifier names. Here's an important quote from the C++ 
> standard via mozilla.org's C++ portability guide, available at
> http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/portable-cpp.html,
> 
> "Certain sets of names and function signatures are always reserved to 
> the implementation:
> 
>     * Each name that contains a double underscore (__) or begins with an 
> underscore followed by an uppercase letter (2.11) is reserved to the 
> implemenation for any use.
>     * Each name that begins with an underscore is reserved to the
> implementaiton for use as a name in the global namespace."
> 
> I've seen many member variables whose names start with an underscore. As 
> far as I understand, this is Very, Very Evil(TM). If you really want an 
> underscore in your identifier name, stick it on the end.
> 

        I agree, many people discourage the use of leading underscores
and there are good reasons for doing so. I believe there is no clear
convention for this in Common C++. Personally, I would suggest to use
trailing underscores in data members as a new recommendation for
contributions, modifications and new code.

> Secondly, what's up with the Common C++ namespace being called "ost"? I 
> assume this stands for Open Source Telecom? If another company were to 
> contribute code to this project, are we going to start seeing "acme" and 
> other namespaces too? :-)
> 
> I think Common C++ deserves a vendor-neutral namespace, say... mmm... 
> "ccxx"? :-)
> 

        Well, from the beginning most of the development has been done
by ost, so the choice of ost as namespace seems logical and fair. We
could provide the alternative ccxx namespace, though it could lead to
some confusion. Moreover, since ost is a corporation that truly and
widely supports free software, I, as a free software developer who has
found many troubles, and finally impossible to develop free software
for software corporations, like that the merits of ost be
recognized. In fact, ost is rather conspicuous about its support for
free software. I think it is really good to find free software deeply
related to commercial corporations. Hopefully, in the future we will
see more free software created and mostly developed by commercial
corporations, which perhaps looks a somewhat uncommon thing as opposed
to free software projects that are created by independent volunteers
and thus are vendor-neutral as for names.

        Of course, this is my personal point of view. If you or
someone else in the list disagree, I would like to further discuss
this issue.

> To provide backward compatability for a while, I think following 
> declaration sprinkled through some of the headers will do the trick:
> 
> #ifdef CCXX_NAMESPACES
> /**
>  * Old Common C++ namesspace (DEPRECATED).
>  */
> namespace ost
> {
>   using namespace ccxx;
> }
> #endif
> 
> Don't know exactly how one convinces doxygen to add a description for a 
> namespace, but anyway.
> 

        There is a \namespace command, and I think the rules for
namespaces are the same as for classes.

> Comments?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Albert
> 
> 
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