This short (hopefully) memo is about to define the coding style

recommended for OpenSM development.

The goal of this is to make OpenSM code base to be standard in terms of

the rest of OpenIB management software, OpenIB projects and Linux in

general. And in this way to make OpenSM more developer friendly and to

involve more open source programmers to be part of OpenSM development

process.

The goal of this is not to provide long and boring list of coding style

paradigms, but rather to define general coding style concept and to

suggest a way for such a concept to be implemented in the existing

OpenSM code base.

The OpenSM project is an OpenIB and Linux centric project, so we think

it is reasonable to use the coding style most popular with OpenIB

projects (linux/Documentation/CodingStyle) as the starting point rather

than reinventing one more coding style rule-set.

Some things from there in short: tab character for indentation and space

character for alignment, K&R style braces, short local and meanful

global names, please no confused Hungary style, short functions. And of

course to be reasonable about all above.

Some ideas about existing OpenSM code improvements in terms of the

Coding style:

* When writing new code, please try to follow the new Coding style.

* Coding style improvement patches are desired and accepted, but please

  try to not mix coding style improvement with functional and other

  changes in one patch.

* When you are going to improve coding style for existing code, please

  try to do it for entire file(s).