[Qemu-devel] [PATCH] HACKING: document #include order

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

It was not obvious to me why "qemu/osdep.h" must be the first #include.
This documents the rationale and the overall #include order.

Cc: Fam Zheng <address@hidden>
Cc: Markus Armbruster <address@hidden>
Cc: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden>
---
 HACKING | 15 +++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 20a9101..ced1236 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -1,10 +1,25 @@
 1. Preprocessor
 
+1.1. Variadic macros
+
 For variadic macros, stick with this C99-like syntax:
 
 #define DPRINTF(fmt, ...)                                       \
     do { printf("IRQ: " fmt, ## __VA_ARGS__); } while (0)
 
+1.2. Include directives
+
+Order include directives as follows:
+
+#include "qemu/osdep.h"  /* Always first... */
+#include <...>           /* then system headers... */
+#include "..."           /* and finally QEMU headers. */
+
+The "qemu/osdep.h" header contains preprocessor macros that affect the behavior
+of core system headers like <stdint.h>.  It must be the first include so that
+core system headers included by external libraries get the preprocessor macros
+that QEMU depends on.
+
 2. C types
 
 It should be common sense to use the right type, but we have collected
-- 
2.7.4