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General coding guidelines

General coding guidelines

Basically, you should always adhere to a language’s specific coding practices:

We also specify some guidelines around using Git

However, we also define a set of standard practices, described below.

Although we use different environments to do our work, everything we do is rooted in Linux/POSIX based environments. Therefore we should adhere to these standards for our text based files.

Tip

Most of these formatting options can be automated via your editor and/or linter, so you should install the language’s specific package in your editor.

Note

By default vi(m) does not show this line but handles it correctly.

  • Prefer spaces (2 or 4) above tabs, unless the used language has another standard
  • Use descriptive variable/function/… naming, instead of very short unmeaningful ones
  • Prefer underscore based variable/function/… naming, a_name_for_something, unless the used language has another standard
  • Properly align and/or format your code, unless the used language has another standard
  • Remove unnecessary whitespace, unless it serves functionality and/or better readability

Example editor configurations

(n)vim 

set colorcolumn=80,120                     " Mark the 80th, 120th columns
set expandtab                              " Use spaces instead of tabs
set fixeol                                 " Add blank line at the end of a file if missing
set list                                   " Show invisible characters
set listchars=tab:▸\ ,trail:·,eol:¬,nbsp:_ " Set invisible characters
set modeline                               " Respect modeline in files
set shiftwidth=2                           " Make indentation (>) as wide as two spaces
set tabstop=2                              " Make tabs as wide as two spaces

VSCode 

{
  "editor.detectIndentation": true,
  "editor.formatOnPaste": true,
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "editor.formatOnSaveMode": "file",
  "editor.formatOnType": true,
  "editor.renderWhitespace": "boundary",
  "editor.rulers": [80, 120],
  "editor.tabSize": 2,
  "editor.wordWrap": "on",
  "editor.wordWrapColumn": 120,
  "files.eol": "\n",
  "files.insertFinalNewline": true,
  "files.trimFinalNewlines": true,
  "markdown.extension.tableFormatter.enabled": false,
  "yaml.schemas": {
    "<path_to_your_skyscrapers_repos>/kubernetes-stack/.vscode/cluster-definition-schema-eks.yaml": [
      "k8s-clusters/*.yaml"
    ]
  },
}

Recommended extensions

  • davidanson.vscode-markdownlint
  • fredwangwang.vscode-hcl-format
  • github.vscode-github-actions
  • hashicorp.hcl
  • ms-azuretools.vscode-docker
  • ms-kubernetes-tools.vscode-kubernetes-tools
  • ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl (when using WSL)
  • opentofu.vscode-opentofu
  • pivotal.vscode-concourse
  • redhat.vscode-yaml
  • signageos.signageos-vscode-sops
  • skyscrapers-engineering.vscode-kms
  • weaveworks.vscode-gitops-tools
  • yzhang.markdown-all-in-one

Atom 

"*":
  editor:
    preferredLineLength: 120
    showIndentGuide: true
    showInvisibles: true
  "line-ending-selector":
    defaultLineEnding: "LF"
  "tree-view":
    hideVcsIgnoredFiles: false
  whitespace:
    removeTrailingWhitespace: true
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