Kernel Class Rules
Design Guidelines
- Never use multiple inheritance. If you need the service of
several classes, use delegation. The only possible but highly
unlikely exception to this is if your class inherits from other pure
abstract classes.
- Have a comment before a class that explains its purpose. Perhaps the
class name is so clear that this is obvious. Then some commentary on
what you are up to.
- Only add members and methods to a class if they make sense w.r.t the
bullet above. If you find yourself unsure to where to hook a piece of
logic, rethink the class and surrounding classes’ purposes.
- Class names and methods names are to be descriptive of what they do.
Avoid generic overloaded names (e.g., write, add, ...) to make grep
easier (and maybe reading too).
- Don’t put implementation details in the header unless the user of the
class needs to know them. Sometimes single line inline
implementations are good “documentation”. If something needs to be
inline for performance, put it at the bottom of the fine using the
inline keyword instead of in the middle of the class definition (if
the implementation is more than a line or two long).
- Assume all methods can throw a DBException. If a class should never
throw (e.g can be called in a destructor), that should be clear.
- Write a unit test for each class you create. If you can’t easily
write a unit test for the class, that is a strong hint it has way too
many external dependencies.
- Do not create early hierarchies. An early hierarchy is a one where
there is only one type of derived class. If you need to separate
functionality, use delegation instead. In that case, make sure to
test separately.
- Avoid friend.
- Default to making classes non-assignable and non-copyable. (Use
boost::noncopyable.)
Layout Guidelines
- For classes where layout matters (anything with #pragma pack), put
data members together at the top of the class. You must also have a
BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(sizeof(ClassName) == EXPECTED_SIZE) either
directly under the class or in the associated .cpp file
