Re: class library header file naming and install conventions

[Bruce Hill <bhill@slac.stanford.edu>]

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for putting together a straw-man on this.   I agree this
is an important topic and I'm glad you're addressing it.
I generally like what you've proposed, so I'll just add
a few comments below.

Regards,
- Bruce

On 03/14/2011 04:11 PM, Jeff Hill wrote:
> All,
>
> When designing a C++ class library whose name is pdq it seems that one might
> implement one header file for every exported class, and follow some naming
> rules. 
>
> Here is a straw-man. Lots of other schemes are possible, and the only really
> bad scheme is to follow no naming convention at all, I suppose.
>
> o The C++ namespace is pdq (class lib names must be all lower case letters)
> o The master header file's name is pdq.h
> o Each exported class named Xxxx has a header file named pdq/Xxxx.h
>   
By Xxxx are you implying that class names start with upper case?    
EPICS seems
to mostly have class names start with lower case and use camelCase for 
compound names,
so perhaps the strawman should use xxxYyyy as the example class name.
> o The master header file has '#include "pdq/Xxxx.h"' for each exported class
> o The pdq.h is installed to $(EPICS_BASE)/include/pdq.h
> o The pdq/Xxxx.h are installed to $(EPICS_BASE)/include/pdq/Xxxx.h
> o The build system appears to implement this type of install now if, in the
> build area, one has something like src/pdq/lib/pdq which contains the header
> files (where they are installed from). Is that what we want? That (redundant
> pdq in the path) could be initially somewhat confusing to the uninitiated,
> and I don’t see any reason to place the header files in a subdirectory other
> than to avoid changing the build system?
>   
I have no problem with pdq appearing twice in the path,
but I'm not sure why the lib directory is needed.
> o The c/c++ files are named src/pdq/lib/Xxxx.cpp
>   
Ditto here.    Why not:
src/pdq/xxxYyyy.cpp
src/pdq/pdq.h
src/pdq/pdq/xxxYyyy.h
src/pdq/doc/pdq.html
src/pdq/doc/pdq/xxxYyyy.html
> o The documentation master goes in src/pdq/doc/pdq.html
> o Maybe the class interface documentation goes in src/pdq/doc/pdq/Xxxx.html
> (same concerns about redundant pdq in the path)
>
> All comments appreciated. 
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeff
> ______________________________________________________
> Jeffrey O. Hill           Email        johill@lanl.gov
> LANL MS H820              Voice        505 665 1831
> Los Alamos NM 87545 USA   FAX          505 665 5107
>
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>   
--
Bruce Hill
Member Technical Staff
SLAC National Accelerator Lab
2575 Sand Hill Road M/S 10
Menlo Park, CA  94025