Introduction

Conventions are important to keep the project consistent.

Design

  • Anything that breaks backwards compatibility should be recipe-like documentated in /src/site/apt/user/upgrading/upgradingTo?.?.x.apt

Code style

See the development setup on how to install our code style in your IDE.

  • We follow Spring's conventions , which are a dialect of Sun coding conventions for Java , with these few differences:
    • The maximum line length is 120 chars instead of 80 chars.
    • Indentation is done by tabs of 4 spaces.
    • A new line before else , catch and finally .
  • Do not use subversion variables such as $Revision$ : if you need that information, use your IDE.

Naming Conventions

Main code

  • Do not use prefixes in instance variables, such as this. (unless they are shadowed) or _ : your IDE will color them differently anyway.

Test code

  • All testcase names should end with Tests .
  • Abstract testcase names should end with AbstractTests so the build process doesn't try to run them.

Build process

The project root pom is the (in)direct parent pom of all module poms. Therefore dependency configuration is inherited.

  • All versions should be specified in the project root pom: never in a module pom.
  • All poms should only depend on their direct dependencies.
  • Dependency scope is usually defined in the project root pom.xml (under discussion)
  • Dependencies should be marked optional (if they are optional) in the module pom.

Documentation

Javadocs

  • Package javadocs should be added in package-info.java files, not in package.html files.
  • Try to consistenly use the following javadoc tags:
    • @author Julius Caesar (to have an idea who knows that code best)
    • @since 0.3 (for a pom version of "0.3.0-SNAPSHOT")

Site documentation

  • All apt/fml/xdoc files should be in camelCase starting with a lower case letter.