Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] How can we make GNU Radio better?

[Michael Dickens]

On May 11, 2011, at 4:33 AM, Martin Braun wrote:
> I'll just name some things from the top of my head... [snip] I realise most 
> of these things are very typical for such a large FOSS projects with so many 
> contributors, but still, I can imagine they can confuse other people than me.

For the sake of brevity, I've removed your list -- it's a good list BTW, and 
yes, quite representative of "a large FOSS projects with so many contributors". 
 Heck, when I look at my internal projects: Once they get large enough it's 
difficult for me to remember the "desired" APIs & hence they end up having 
these same issues.

Are they confusing?  Yes, sometimes.  I've learned with most of the FOSS 
projects that I work on or use that I cannot assume that the API will be 
consistent & to make sure to check before using.

Maybe if/when gnuradio-core is split out whoever is doing that work could also 
review the APIs to make sure they are consistent -- YA API change won't kill 
GNU Radio, though it might be annoying to end-users.

And, before that, it would be good for Tom (since he's the "benevolent leader") 
to organize a document describing the desired APIs if there isn't one (I 
remember having such a discussion with Eric, but I don't know if a "formal" 
document was ever created) -- examples off the top of my head include:

* underscore_separated_names but never CamelCase;
* separate method names ("get_foo" and "set_foo") instead of method overloading 
("foo ()" and "foo (foo_type new_foo)");
* 'b' for bit, 'B' for byte, 'c' for char, 'f' for 32-bit IEEE float, etc...

I'm sure if you (Martin) wanted to do the legwork organizing such a document, 
the rest of us would help review and augment it ;) - MLD