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Development Standards

This document outlines the development standards and best practices followed at UROC. These guidelines ensure consistency and maintainability across our codebase.

Table of Contents​

Version Control​

Git Configuration​

Branch Structure​

  • Main Branch: main
    • Production-ready code
    • Protected branch
    • Requires pull request approval
  • Development Branch: develop
    • Integration branch for features
    • Testing environment

Branch Naming Convention​

  • Feature branches: feature/short-description
  • Bug fixes: fix/issue-description
  • Hotfixes: hotfix/critical-fix
  • Releases: release/v1.2.3

Commit Standards​

Commit Message Format​

<type>: <short description>

[optional body]
[optional footer]

Commit Types​

  • feat: New feature
  • fix: Bug fix
  • docs: Documentation changes
  • style: Code style updates
  • refactor: Code refactoring
  • test: Adding/modifying tests
  • chore: Maintenance tasks

Best Practices​

  1. Keep commits atomic and focused
  2. Write clear, concise descriptions
  3. Reference issue numbers when applicable
  4. AI-generated commit messages are acceptable if accurate and concise

Development Workflow​

Feature Development Process​

  1. Create feature branch from develop
  2. Implement changes
  3. Submit pull request
  4. Merge to develop

Code Style​

General Guidelines​

  • Write self-documenting code
  • Follow DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles
  • Maintain consistent naming conventions
  • Keep functions small and focused
  • Add comments for complex logic

Documentation​

Code Documentation​

  • Ensure code comments are up to date

Project Documentation​

  • Maintain README files
  • Primarly document on umd-uroc.GitHub.io

.editorconfig​

Below is our global .editorconfig. This file is derived from Google's Styleguide for their code.

# Top-most EditorConfig file
root = true

# Global settings for all files
[*]
charset = utf-8
end_of_line = lf
trim_trailing_whitespace = true
insert_final_newline = true

# Python-specific settings
[*.py]
indent_style = space
indent_size = 4
max_line_length = 80

# Go files use tabs (gofmt standard)
[*.go]
indent_style = tab

# Makefile recipes require tabs
[Makefile]
indent_style = tab

# Most other languages use 2-space indentation and 100-char line length
[*.{c,cc,cpp,h,hpp,java,js,jsx,ts,tsx,css,scss,html,xml,json,yaml,yml,swift,rb,scala,sh}]
indent_style = space
indent_size = 2
max_line_length = 100