- When you come up with an API, document it.
- - The first #include in C files, except in platform specific
- compat/ implementations, should be git-compat-util.h or another
- header file that includes it, such as cache.h or builtin.h.
+ - The first #include in C files, except in platform specific compat/
+ implementations, must be either "git-compat-util.h", "cache.h" or
+ "builtin.h". You do not have to include more than one of these.
+
+ - A C file must directly include the header files that declare the
+ functions and the types it uses, except for the functions and types
+ that are made available to it by including one of the header files
+ it must include by the previous rule.
- If you are planning a new command, consider writing it in shell
or perl first, so that changes in semantics can be easily
- Say what the error is first ("cannot open %s", not "%s: cannot open")
+Externally Visible Names
+
+ - For configuration variable names, follow the existing convention:
+
+ . The section name indicates the affected subsystem.
+
+ . The subsection name, if any, indicates which of an unbounded set
+ of things to set the value for.
+
+ . The variable name describes the effect of tweaking this knob.
+
+ The section and variable names that consist of multiple words are
+ formed by concatenating the words without punctuations (e.g. `-`),
+ and are broken using bumpyCaps in documentation as a hint to the
+ reader.
+
+ When choosing the variable namespace, do not use variable name for
+ specifying possibly unbounded set of things, most notably anything
+ an end user can freely come up with (e.g. branch names). Instead,
+ use subsection names or variable values, like the existing variable
+ branch.<name>.description does.
+
+
Writing Documentation:
Most (if not all) of the documentation pages are written in the