[vtk-developers] Updates to VTK's coding standard page

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Kyle Lutz <kyle.lutz at kitware.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Marcus D. Hanwell
> <marcus.hanwell at kitware.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> As we were linking to it from the commit guidelines page, I have also
>> taken the opportunity to update the coding standards page for VTK,
>>
>> http://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_Coding_Standards
>>
>> This is in line with my understanding of recent discussions, such as
>> improvements to wrapping allowing default arguments, using STL in API
>> outside of vtkCommon* modules being acceptable, moving toward using
>> std::string in API rather that vtkStdString. Comments welcome, or feel
>> free to edit/raise concerns here.
>
> Is there any wiki page or public document explaining the rational
> behind these conventions?
>
> To be more specific, I don't understand why we insist upon the following:
>
> * "[the STL] should be used sparingly"
> * "STL use should use the PIMPL idiom"
> * "When using anything declared in iostream, do not use std::"
>
If you want to debate aspects of the coding standard please start a
new thread with a relevant topic. These have been in that page since
well before I started working on VTK, I added the sections relaxing
STL usage outside of the vtkCommon* modules after several discussions
on and off list with Berk and others. Last I spoke to Berk he wanted
to remain conservative with the API in Common, and that seems
reasonable to me.

If you want to debate/change aspects of the coding standards, commit
policy etc then the development list and/or the ARB are the right
places to do it.

Marcus