1.2.3

## Coding Style Guide

The following guidelines aim to keep the Rubinius codebase maintainable. When in doubt about a guideline here, ask us in the #rubinius IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

## All Code

- Configure your editor for soft tabs, not hard tabs
- Expand tabs to two spaces
- Leave a trailing newline at the end of each file

## C++ Code

- No space between condition and paren. Use `if(1)` NOT `if (1)`

- Put the opening brace on the same line as the function declaration or conditional

- Always use curly braces, even if they can be left out.

- Prefer parentheses to implicit precedence rules (within reason)

- Alternate versions of functions should be named why they are different from the primary. If there is a function ‘person()’ and you want a version that takes the name of the person, it should be ‘person_with_name(char *name)’ or ‘person_with_details(char *name, …)’. NOT ‘person1(char *name)’.

## Ruby Code

- Methods: Try to keep your methods short–one screenful and try to adhere to DRY within reason. Generally common functionality should be abstracted to helper methods (which you can make ‘private’) but in some cases, particularly working with Core, sometimes trying to DRY things up is just an obstacle if you have to maneuver around several different error conditions, for example.

- Method names: should be clear, expressive and meaningful. Avoid using underscores to ‘protect’ the method (‘__send__’) with some exceptions.

- Smalltalk-style method names are OK, meaning that you could have a method `SomeClass.make_from` when it is intended to be invoked as `SomeClass.make_from file` or `SomeClass.make_from :file => name`. There the parameter name completes the method name and makes for more natural reading.

- Variable names: make them clear and meaningful (with some well-known exceptions like using ‘i’ for a counter.) Try to avoid shadowing method names, for example within Array use ‘idx’ in favour of ‘index’ because the latter is also a method name.

- Postconditions: use postconditions only if your expression is a one-liner and you do not have many conditions.

- Blocks: Use either `do ... end` or `{...}`, spaces between the delimiters and code (`foo { |arg| code }`). Split long or complex expressions over multiple lines like this:

      mapped = foo.map do |elem|
        do_something_with elem
      end

- Module/Class definitions with scope qualifiers:

      module Rubinius::Profiler
        class Sampler
        end
      end

## Kernel Code

The primary guideline for all kernel code is simple and efficient. Simple code is often more efficient and generally more comprehensible. There should be no metaprogramming code in bootstrap. Use the #attr_xxx methods throughout the kernel source. Also, alias methods using the #alias_method call next to the method definition. Specify private methods with the `private :sym` method next to the method definition. Remember that the versions of the methods listed above in the alpha stage take a single, symbol argument.

## Documentation

- Use RDoc for documentation in Ruby code.

- Use Doxygen for documentation in C++ code.

- Use Markdown for documentation in the /doc directory. See Markdown syntax Set the text width to 78 characters and use hard breaks.