Conventions for working on Quagga

March 8, 2012
This is a living document. Suggestions for updates, via the quagga-dev list, are
welcome.

Contents
1 GUIDELINES FOR HACKING ON QUAGGA

2 COMPILE-TIME CONDITIONAL CODE

3 COMMIT MESSAGES

4 HACKING THE BUILD SYSTEM

5 RELEASE PROCEDURE

6 TOOL VERSIONS

7 SHARED LIBRARY VERSIONING

8 GIT COMMIT SUBMISSION

9 PATCH SUBMISSION

10 PATCH APPLICATION

11 STABLE PLATFORMS AND DAEMONS

12 IMPORT OR UPDATE VENDOR SPECIFIC ROUTING PROTOCOLS

9

GUIDELINES FOR HACKING ON QUAGGA

GNU coding standards apply. Indentation follows the result of invoking GNU
indent (as of 2.2.8a) with no arguments. Note that this uses tabs instead of
spaces where possible for leading whitespace, and assumes that tabs are every
8 columns. Do not attempt to redefine the location of tab stops. Note also
that some indentation does not follow GNU style. This is a historical accident,
and we generally only clean up whitespace when code is unmaintainable due to
whitespace issues, to minimise merging conflicts.
For GNU emacs, use indentation style gnu.
For Vim, use the following lines (note that tabs are at 8, and that softtabstop
sets the indentation level):
set tabstop=8 set softtabstop=2 set shiftwidth=2 set noexpandtab
Be particularly careful not to break platforms/protocols that you cannot test.
New code should have good comments, which explain why the code is correct.
Changes to existing code should in many cases upgrade the comments when
necessary for a reviewer to conclude that the change has no unintended consequences.
Each file in the Git repository should have a git format-placeholder (like an
RCS Id keyword), somewhere very near the top, commented out appropriately
for the file type. The placeholder used for Quagga (replacing dollar with $) is:
$QuaggaId: <dollar>Format:%an, %ai, %h<dollar> $
See line 2 of HACKING.tex, the source for this document, for an example.
This placeholder string will be expanded out by the git archive commands,
wihch is used to generate the tar archives for snapshots and releases.
Please document fully the proper use of a new function in the header file in
which it is declared. And please consult existing headers for documentation on
how to use existing functions. In particular, please consult these header files:
lib/log.h logging levels and usage guidance
[more to be added]
If changing an exported interface, please try to deprecate the interface in an
orderly manner. If at all possible, try to retain the old deprecated interface as
is, or functionally equivalent. Make a note of when the interface was deprecated
and guard the deprecated interface definitions in the header file, ie:
/* Deprecated: 20050406 */
#if !defined(QUAGGA_NO_DEPRECATED_INTERFACES)
#warning "Using deprecated <libname> (interface(s)|function(s))"
...

#endif /* QUAGGA_NO_DEPRECATED_INTERFACES */
This is to ensure that the core Quagga sources do not use the deprecated interfaces (you should update Quagga sources to use new interfaces, if applicable), while allowing external sources to continue to build. Deprecated interfaces
should be excised in the next unstable cycle.
Note: If you wish, you can test for GCC and use a function marked with the
deprecated attribute. However, you must provide the warning for other compilers.
If changing or removing a command definition, ensure that you properly deprecate it - use the DEPRECATED form of the appropriate DEFUN macro.
This is critical. Even if the command can no longer function, you MUST still
implement it as a do-nothing stub.
Failure to follow this causes grief for systems administrators, as an upgrade may
cause daemons to fail to start because of unrecognised commands. Deprecated
commands should be excised in the next unstable cycle. A list of deprecated
commands should be collated for each release.
See also section 7 below regarding SHARED LIBRARY VERSIONING.

COMPILE-TIME CONDITIONAL CODE

Please think very carefully before making code conditional at compile time, as
it increases maintenance burdens and user confusion. In particular, please avoid
gratuitious enable-. . . switches to the configure script - typically code should
be good enough to be in Quagga, or it shouldnt be there at all.
When code must be compile-time conditional, try have the compiler make it
conditional rather than the C pre-processor - so that it will still be checked by
the compiler, even if disabled. I.e. this:
if (SOME_SYMBOL)
frobnicate();
rather than:
#ifdef SOME_SYMBOL
frobnicate ();
#endif /* SOME_SYMBOL */
Note that the former approach requires ensuring that SOME SYMBOL will be
defined (watch your AC DEFINEs).

COMMIT MESSAGES

The commit message requirements are:

The message MUST provide a suitable one-line summary followed by a
blank line as the very first line of the message, in the form:
topic: high-level, one line summary
Where topic would tend to be name of a subdirectory, and/or daemon,
unless theres a more suitable topic (e.g. build). This topic is used to
organise change summaries in release announcements.
It should have a suitable body, which tries to address the following areas,
so as to help reviewers and future browsers of the code-base understand
why the change is correct (note also the code comment requirements):
The motivation for the change (does it fix a bug, if so which? add a
feature?)
The general approach taken, and trade-offs versus any other approaches.
Any testing undertaken or other information affecting the confidence
that can be had in the change.
Information to allow reviewers to be able to tell which specific changes
to the code are intended (and hence be able to spot any accidental
unintended changes).
The one-line summary must be limited to 54 characters, and all other lines to
72 characters.
Commit message bodies in the Quagga project have typically taken the following
form:
An optional introduction, describing the change generally.
A short description of each specific change made, preferably:
file by file
function by function (use of ditto, or globs is allowed)
Contributors are strongly encouraged to follow this form.
This itemised commit messages allows reviewers to have confidence that the
author has self-reviewed every line of the patch, as well as providing reviewers
a clear index of which changes are intended, and descriptions for them (C-toenglish descriptions are not desireable - some discretion is useful). For short
patches, a per-function/file break-down may be redundant. For longer patches,
such a break-down may be essential. A contrived example (where the general
discussion is obviously somewhat redundant, given the one-line summary):

zebra: Enhance frob FSM to detect loss of frob

Add a new DOWN state to the frob state machine to allow the barinator to
detect loss of frob.
* frob.h: (struct frob) Add DOWN state flag.
* frob.c: (frob\_change) set/clear DOWN appropriately on state change.
* bar.c: (barinate) Check frob for DOWN state.
Please have a look at the git commit logs to get a feel for what the norms are.
Note that the commit message format follows git norms, so that git log
oneline will have useful output.

HACKING THE BUILD SYSTEM

If you change or add to the build system (configure.ac, any Makefile.am, etc.),
try to check that the following things still work:
make dist
resulting dist tarball builds
out-of-tree builds
The quagga.net site relies on make dist to work to generate snapshots. It must
work. Common problems are to forget to have some additional file included in
the dist, or to have a make rule refer to a source file without using the srcdir
variable.

RELEASE PROCEDURE
Tag the apppropriate commit with a release tag (follow existing conventions).
[This enables recreating the release, and is just good CM practice.]
Create a fresh tar archive of the quagga.net repository, and do a test build:
git-clone git:///code.quagga.net/quagga.git quagga
git-archive --remote=git://code.quagga.net/quagga.git \
--prefix=quagga-release/ master | tar -xf cd quagga-release
autoreconf -i
./configure
make
5

make dist
The tarball which make dist creates is the tarball to be released! The gitarchive step ensures youre working with code corresponding to that in the
official repository, and also carries out keyword expansion. If any errors occur,
move tags as needed and start over from the fresh checkouts. Do not append to
tarballs, as this has produced non-standards-conforming tarballs in the past.
See also: http://wiki.quagga.net/index.php/Main/Processes
[TODO: collation of a list of deprecated commands. Possibly can be scripted
to extract from vtysh/vtysh cmd.c]

TOOL VERSIONS

Require versions of support tools are listed in INSTALL.quagga.txt. Required

versions should only be done with due deliberation, as it can cause environments
to no longer be able to compile quagga.

SHARED LIBRARY VERSIONING

[this section is at the moment just gdts opinion]

Quagga builds several shared libaries (lib/libzebra, ospfd/libospf, ospfclient/libsopfapiclient).
These may be used by external programs, e.g. a new routing protocol that works
with the zebra daemon, or ospfapi clients. The libtool info pages (node Versioning) explain when major and minor version numbers should be changed.
These values are set in Makefile.am near the definition of the library. If you
make a change that requires changing the shared library version, please update
Makefile.am.
libospf exports far more than it should, and is needed by ospfapi clients. Only
bump libospf for changes to functions for which it is reasonable for a user of
ospfapi to call, and please err on the side of not bumping.
There is no support intended for installing part of zebra. The core library
libzebra and the included daemons should always be built and installed together.

GIT COMMIT SUBMISSION

The preferred method for submitting changes is to provide git commits via a
publically-accessible git repository, which the maintainers can easily pull.

The commits should be in a branch based off the Quagga.net master - a feature
branch. Ideally there should be no commits to this branch other than those in
master, and those intended to be submitted. However, merge commits to this
branch from the Quagga master are permitted, though strongly discouraged use another (potentially local and throw-away) branch to test merge with the
latest Quagga master.
Recommended practice is to keep different logical sets of changes on separate
branches - topic or feature branches. This allows you to still merge them
together to one branch (potentially local and/or throw-away) for testing or
use, while retaining smaller, independent branches that are easier to merge.
All content guidelines in section 9, PATCH SUBMISSION apply.

PATCH SUBMISSION
For complex changes, contributors are strongly encouraged to first start a
design discussion on the quagga-dev list before starting any coding.
Send a clean diff against the master branch of the quagga.git repository,
in unified diff format, preferably with the -p argument to show C function
affected by any chunk, and with the -w and -b arguments to minimise
changes. E.g:
git diff -up mybranch..remotes/quagga.net/master
It is preferable to use git format-patch, and even more preferred to publish
a git repository (see GIT COMMIT SUBMISSION, section 8).
If not using git format-patch, Include the commit message in the email.
After a commit, code should have comments explaining to the reviewer
why it is correct, without reference to history. The commit message should
explain why the change is correct.
Include NEWS entries as appropriate.
Include only one semantic change or group of changes per patch.
Do not make gratuitous changes to whitespace. See the w and b arguments
to diff.
Changes should be arranged so that the least contraversial and most trivial
are first, and the most complex or more contraversial are last. This will
maximise how many the Quagga maintainers can merge, even if some
other commits need further work.
Providing a unit-test is strongly encouraged. Doing so will make it much
easier for maintainers to have confidence that they will be able to support
your change.

 New code should be arranged so that it easy to verify and test. E.g.
stateful logic should be separated out from functional logic as much as
possible: wherever possible, move complex logic out to smaller helper
functions which access no state other than their arguments.
State on which platforms and with what daemons the patch has been
tested. Understand that if the set of testing locations is small, and the
patch might have unforeseen or hard to fix consequences that there may
be a call for testers on quagga-dev, and that the patch may be blocked
until test results appear.
If there are no users for a platform on quagga-dev who are able and willing
to verify -current occasionally, that platform may be dropped from the
should be checked list.

10

PATCH APPLICATION

Only apply patches that meet the submission guidelines.

If the patch might break something, issue a call for testing on the mailinglist.
Give an appropriate commit message (see above), and use the author
argument to git-commit, if required, to ensure proper attribution (you
should still be listed as committer)
Immediately after commiting, double-check (with git-log and/or gitk). If
theres a small mistake you can easily fix it with git commit amend ..
When merging a branch, always use an explicit merge commit. Giving
no-ff ensures a merge commit is created which documents this human
decided to merge this branch at this time.

11

STABLE PLATFORMS AND DAEMONS

The list of platforms that should be tested follow. This is a list derived from
what quagga is thought to run on and for which maintainers can test or there
are people on quagga-dev who are able and willing to verify that -current does
or does not work correctly.
BSD (Free, Net or Open, any platform)
GNU/Linux (any distribution, i386)
Solaris (strict alignment, any platform)
future: NetBSD/sparc64

The list of daemons that are thought to be stable and that should be tested are:
zebra
bgpd
ripd
ospfd
ripngd
Daemons which are in a testing phase are
ospf6d
isisd
watchquagga

12

IMPORT OR UPDATE VENDOR SPECIFIC

ROUTING PROTOCOLS

The source code of Quagga is based on two vendors:

zebra_org (http://www.zebra.org/) isisd_sf (http://isisd.sf.net/)
To import code from further sources, e.g. for archival purposes without necessarily having to review and/or fix some changeset, create a branch from master:
git checkout -b archive/foo master
<apply changes>
git commit -a "Joe Bar <[email protected]>"
git push quagga archive/foo
presuming quagga corresponds to a file in your .git/remotes with configuration
for the appropriate Quagga.net repository.