Code Conventions - TheShubham99/Terasology GitHub Wiki

Over the course of its life, every project develops it's own code conventions, and Terasology is no different. Note that we try and stick to the standard Java conventions as much as possible.

Identation

We follow the 1TBS (One true brace style) exclusively. Also, every text file (be it code, or text-asset like json) should end with an empty line.

For all code files, we follow a 4-space identation style, and firmly believe in the saying "death to all tabs".

void someFunction() {
    doSomething();
    doSomethingElse();
}

However, for asset files (like json, that is used for all prefab and config files) we follow a 2-space indentation style.

container: {
  property1: "someValue",
  property2: "someOtherValue"
}

Note that even for single line if and while statements, we use brackets.

// Bad
if (something)
    // Do something

// Good
if (something) {
    // Do something
}

Naming Conventions

Almost everything uses either camelCase, or PascalCase (same as camelCase, but with the first letter capitalized).

Type	Style to follow
Package name	camelCase
Class or interface name	PascalCase
Functions and attributes	camelCase
Constants	ALL_CAPITAL

For more information, refer to the official Oracle docs.

package test;

class TestClass {
    private static final int SOME_CONSTANT = 0;

    int someInt;

    void doSomething() {
    }
}

Some random examples

Control flow keywords (if, while, for) and other similar constructs are followed by a space, and the actual conditional statement is not padded by any space inside the parentheses.

if (x == 5) {
    // Something
}

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    // Something
}

while ((x > 10 && x >= 20) || (y == 8 || z == 16)) {
}

Conditional operator ?: is also padded liberally with spaces.

int x = y == 10 ? 20 : 30;

A few extra parentheses to make things clear are always appreciated, but don't overdo them!

// Good
int x = (y == 10) ? 20 : 30;

// Bad
int x = ((y == (10)) ? (20) : (30));

Gray areas

TODO: Empty function blocks TODO: Indentation in multi-line function calls

Others

• Use // TODO comments to note where something needs to be done
• Don't use Hungarian notation to denote types
• Use interfaces over concrete classes for variables (e.g. Map instead of HashMap). Feel free to use guava to construct the actual instance (e.g. Maps.newHashMap())
• Use complete imports, instead of * imports
• Never have any if or while constructs without brackets, even if they only contain a single statement.

Checkstyle

Terasology uses Checkstyle to ensure that the styling is correct. For more information, refer to the Checkstyle wiki page.