In general the LXC project follows the Linux kernel coding style. However, there are a few differences. They are outlined in this document.
The Linux kernel coding style guide can be found within the kernel tree:
Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
It can be accessed online too:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/coding-style.html
-
The coding style guide refers to new code. But legacy code can be cleaned up and we are happy to take those patches.
-
Just because there is still code in LXC that doesn't adhere to the coding standards outlined here does not license not adhering to the coding style. In other words: please stick to the coding style.
-
Maintainers are free to ignore rules specified here when merging pull requests. This guideline might seem a little weird but it exits to ease new developers into the code base and to prevent unnecessary bikeshedding. If a maintainer feels hat enforcing a specific rule in a given commit would do more harm than good they should always feel free to ignore the rule.
Furthermore, when merging pull requests that do not adhere to our coding style maintainers should feel free to grab the commit, adapt it to our coding style and add their Signed-off-by line to it. This is especially helpful to make it easier for first-time contributors and to prevent having pull requests being stuck in the merge queue because of minor details.
-
We currently do not provide automatic coding style checks but if a suitable tool is found we are happy to integrate it into our test suite. It is possible and recommended to use the
clang-format
binary to check your code. The following options are an approximation of the coding style used here. Simply create a file called.clang-format
in your home directory with the following options:cat << EOF > "${HOME}"/.clang-format AlignEscapedNewlines: Left BreakBeforeBraces: Attach AlwaysBreakBeforeMultilineStrings: false BreakBeforeBinaryOperators: None MaxEmptyLinesToKeep: 1 PenaltyBreakBeforeFirstCallParameter: 1000000 BinPackArguments: true BinPackParameters: true AllowAllParametersOfDeclarationOnNextLine: false AlignAfterOpenBracket: true SpacesInSquareBrackets: false SpacesInCStyleCastParentheses: false SpaceInEmptyParentheses: false SpaceBeforeParens: ControlStatements SpaceAfterCStyleCast: false SortIncludes: true PenaltyReturnTypeOnItsOwnLine: 10000 PenaltyExcessCharacter: 10 Language: Cpp ForEachMacros: ['lxc_list_for_each', 'lxc_list_for_each_safe'] AllowShortLoopsOnASingleLine: false AllowShortIfStatementsOnASingleLine: false AllowShortFunctionsOnASingleLine: None AllowShortCaseLabelsOnASingleLine: false AllowShortBlocksOnASingleLine: false BasedOnStyle: LLVM TabWidth: 8 IndentWidth: 8 UseTab: Always BreakBeforeBraces: Linux AllowShortIfStatementsOnASingleLine: false IndentCaseLabels: false EOF
However, it will not handle all cases correctly. For example, most
struct
initializations will not be correct. In such cases please refer to the coding style here.
- LXC uses tabs.
- Any comments that are added must use
/* */
. - Single-line comments should start on the same line as the opening
/*
. - Single-line comments should simply be placed between
/* */
. For example:/* Define pivot_root() if missing from the C library */
- Mutli-line comment should start on the next line following the opening
/*
and should end with the closing*/
on a separate line. For example:/* * At this point the old-root is mounted on top of our new-root * To unmounted it we must not be chdir()ed into it, so escape back * to old-root. */
- This is not strictly enforced. It is perfectly valid to sometimes overflow this limit if it helps clarity. Nonetheless, try to stick to it and use common sense to decide when not to.
- Error messages must start with a capital letter and must not end with a punctuation sign.
- They should be descriptive, without being needlessly long. It is best to just use already existing error messages as examples.
- The commit message itself is not subject to rule 4), i.e. it should not be wrapped at 80chars. This is to make it easy to grep for it.
- Examples of acceptable error messages are:
SYSERROR("Failed to create directory \"%s\"", path); WARN("\"/dev\" directory does not exist. Proceeding without autodev being set up");
- Functions that can fail in a non-binary way should return
-1
and seterrno
to a meaningful error code. As a convenience LXC provides theminus_one_set_errno
macro:static int set_config_net_l2proxy(const char *key, const char *value, struct lxc_conf *lxc_conf, void *data) { struct lxc_netdev *netdev = data; unsigned int val = 0; int ret; if (lxc_config_value_empty(value)) return clr_config_net_l2proxy(key, lxc_conf, data); if (!netdev) return minus_one_set_errno(EINVAL); ret = lxc_safe_uint(value, &val); if (ret < 0) return minus_one_set_errno(-ret); switch (val) { case 0: netdev->l2proxy = false; return 0; case 1: netdev->l2proxy = true; return 0; } return minus_one_set_errno(EINVAL); }
- Functions which are only used in the current file and are not exported
within the codebase need to be declared with the
static
attribute.
- Functions declared in header files (
*.h
) should use theextern
keyword. - Functions declared in source files (
*.c
) should not use theextern
keyword.
- variables should be declared at the top of the function or at the beginning of a new scope but never in the middle of a scope. They should be ordered in the following way:
- automatically freed variables
- This specifically references variables cleaned up via the
cleanup
attribute as supported bygcc
andclang
.
- This specifically references variables cleaned up via the
- initialized variables
- uninitialized variables General rules are:
- put base types before complex types
- put standard types defined by libc before types defined by LXC
- put multiple declarations of the same type on the same line
- Examples of good declarations can be seen in the following function:
int lxc_clear_procs(struct lxc_conf *c, const char *key) { struct lxc_list *it, *next; bool all = false; const char *k = NULL; if (strcmp(key, "lxc.proc") == 0) all = true; else if (strncmp(key, "lxc.proc.", sizeof("lxc.proc.") - 1) == 0) k = key + sizeof("lxc.proc.") - 1; else return -1; lxc_list_for_each_safe(it, &c->procs, next) { struct lxc_proc *proc = it->elem; if (!all && strcmp(proc->filename, k) != 0) continue; lxc_list_del(it); free(proc->filename); free(proc->value); free(proc); free(it); } return 0; }
- When checking whether a function not returning booleans was successful or not
the returned value must be assigned before it is checked (
str{n}cmp()
functions being one notable exception). For example:Functions returning booleans can be checked directly. For example:/* assign value to "ret" first */ ret = mount(sourcepath, cgpath, "cgroup", remount_flags, NULL); /* check whether function was successful */ if (ret < 0) { SYSERROR("Failed to remount \"%s\" ro", cgpath); free(sourcepath); return -1; }
extern bool lxc_string_in_array(const char *needle, const char **haystack); /* check right away */ if (lxc_string_in_array("ns", (const char **)h->subsystems)) continue;
- This rule mainly exists for
str{n}cmp()
type functions. In most cases they are used like a boolean function to check whether a string matches or not. But they return an integer. It is perfectly fine to checkstr{n}cmp()
functions directly but you must compare explicitly against a value. That is to say, while they are conceptually boolean functions they shouldn't be treated as such since they don't really behave like boolean functions. Soif (!str{n}cmp())
andif (str{n}cmp())
checks must not be used. Good examples are found in the following functions:static int set_config_hooks(const char *key, const char *value, struct lxc_conf *lxc_conf, void *data) char *copy; if (lxc_config_value_empty(value)) return lxc_clear_hooks(lxc_conf, key); if (strcmp(key + 4, "hook") == 0) { ERROR("lxc.hook must not have a value"); return -1; } copy = strdup(value); if (!copy) return -1; if (strcmp(key + 9, "pre-start") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_PRESTART, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "start-host") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_START_HOST, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "pre-mount") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_PREMOUNT, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "autodev") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_AUTODEV, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "mount") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_MOUNT, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "start") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_START, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "stop") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_STOP, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "post-stop") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_POSTSTOP, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "clone") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_CLONE, copy); else if (strcmp(key + 9, "destroy") == 0) return add_hook(lxc_conf, LXCHOOK_DESTROY, copy); free(copy); return -1; }
- They are made optional and there is no guarantee that future C standards will support them.
- libc provides
EXIT_FAILURE
andEXIT_SUCCESS
. Use them whenever possible in the child offork()
ed process or when exiting from amain()
function.
goto
s are an essential language construct of C and are perfect to perform
cleanup operations or simplify the logic of functions. However, here are the
rules to use them:
- use descriptive
goto
labels. For example, if you know that this label is only used as an error path you should use something likeon_error
instead ofout
as label name. - only jump downwards unless you are handling
EAGAIN
errors and want to avoiddo-while
constructs. - An example of a good usage of
goto
is:static int set_config_idmaps(const char *key, const char *value, struct lxc_conf *lxc_conf, void *data) { unsigned long hostid, nsid, range; char type; int ret; struct lxc_list *idmaplist = NULL; struct id_map *idmap = NULL; if (lxc_config_value_empty(value)) return lxc_clear_idmaps(lxc_conf); idmaplist = malloc(sizeof(*idmaplist)); if (!idmaplist) goto on_error; idmap = malloc(sizeof(*idmap)); if (!idmap) goto on_error; memset(idmap, 0, sizeof(*idmap)); ret = parse_idmaps(value, &type, &nsid, &hostid, &range); if (ret < 0) { ERROR("Failed to parse id mappings"); goto on_error; } INFO("Read uid map: type %c nsid %lu hostid %lu range %lu", type, nsid, hostid, range); if (type == 'u') idmap->idtype = ID_TYPE_UID; else if (type == 'g') idmap->idtype = ID_TYPE_GID; else goto on_error; idmap->hostid = hostid; idmap->nsid = nsid; idmap->range = range; idmaplist->elem = idmap; lxc_list_add_tail(&lxc_conf->id_map, idmaplist); if (!lxc_conf->root_nsuid_map && idmap->idtype == ID_TYPE_UID) if (idmap->nsid == 0) lxc_conf->root_nsuid_map = idmap; if (!lxc_conf->root_nsgid_map && idmap->idtype == ID_TYPE_GID) if (idmap->nsid == 0) lxc_conf->root_nsgid_map = idmap; idmap = NULL; return 0; on_error: free(idmaplist); free(idmap); return -1; }
- When something can be conceptualized in a binary way use a boolean not an integer.
16) Cleanup Functions Must Handle The Object's Null Type And Being Passed Already Cleaned Up Objects
- If you implement a custom cleanup function to e.g. free a complex type
you declared you must ensure that the object's null type is handled and
treated as a NOOP. For example:
void lxc_free_array(void **array, lxc_free_fn element_free_fn) { void **p; for (p = array; p && *p; p++) element_free_fn(*p); free((void*)array); }
- Cleanup functions should also expect to be passed already cleaned up objects.
One way to handle this cleanly is to initialize the cleaned up variable to
a special value that signals the function that the element has already been
freed on the next call. For example, the following function cleans up file
descriptors and sets the already closed file descriptors to
-EBADF
. On the next call it can simply check whether the file descriptor is positive and move on if it isn't:static void lxc_put_attach_clone_payload(struct attach_clone_payload *p) { if (p->ipc_socket >= 0) { shutdown(p->ipc_socket, SHUT_RDWR); close(p->ipc_socket); p->ipc_socket = -EBADF; } if (p->pty_fd >= 0) { close(p->pty_fd); p->pty_fd = -EBADF; } if (p->init_ctx) { lxc_proc_put_context_info(p->init_ctx); p->init_ctx = NULL; } }
- There are cases where you do not care about the return value of a function.
Please cast the return value to
(void)
when doing so. - Standard library functions or functions which are known to be ignored by
default do not need to be cast to
(void)
. Classical candidates areclose()
andfclose()
. - A good example is:
for (i = 0; hierarchies[i]; i++) { char *fullpath; char *path = hierarchies[i]->fullcgpath; ret = chowmod(path, destuid, nsgid, 0755); if (ret < 0) return -1; /* failures to chown() these are inconvenient but not * detrimental we leave these owned by the container launcher, * so that container root can write to the files to attach. we * chmod() them 664 so that container systemd can write to the * files (which systemd in wily insists on doing). */ if (hierarchies[i]->version == cgroup_super_magic) { fullpath = must_make_path(path, "tasks", null); (void)chowmod(fullpath, destuid, nsgid, 0664); free(fullpath); } fullpath = must_make_path(path, "cgroup.procs", null); (void)chowmod(fullpath, destuid, 0, 0664); free(fullpath); if (hierarchies[i]->version != cgroup2_super_magic) continue; fullpath = must_make_path(path, "cgroup.subtree_control", null); (void)chowmod(fullpath, destuid, nsgid, 0664); free(fullpath); fullpath = must_make_path(path, "cgroup.threads", null); (void)chowmod(fullpath, destuid, nsgid, 0664); free(fullpath); }
- Let's be honest, it is really the only sensible way to do this.
- Signed-off-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You did write this code or have the right to contribute it to LXC.
- Acked-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You did read the code and think it is correct. This is usually only used by maintainers or developers that have made significant contributions and can vouch for the correctness of someone else's code.
- Reviewed-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You did review the code and vouch for its correctness, i.e. you'd be prepared to fix bugs it might cause. This is usually only used by maintainers or developers that have made significant contributions and can vouch for the correctness of someone else's code.
- Co-developed-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- The code can not be reasonably attributed to a single developer, i.e. you worked on this together.
- Tested-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You verified that the code fixes a given bug or is behaving as advertised.
- Reported-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You found and reported the bug.
- Suggested-by: Random J Developer random@developer.org
- You wrote the code but someone contributed the idea. This line is usually overlooked but it is a sign of good etiquette and coding ethics: if someone helped you solve a problem or had a clever idea do not silently claim it by slapping your Signed-off-by underneath. Be honest and add a Suggested-by.
- You must stick to the 80chars limit especially in the title of the commit message.
- Please use English commit messages only.
- use meaningful commit messages.
- Use correct spelling and grammar. If you are not a native speaker and/or feel yourself struggling with this it is perfectly fine to point this out and there's no need to apologize. Usually developers will be happy to pull your branch and adopt the commit message.
- Please always use the affected file (without the file type suffix) or module as a prefix in the commit message.
- Examples of good commit messages are:
commit b87243830e3b5e95fa31a17cf1bfebe55353bf13 Author: Felix Abecassis <fabecassis@nvidia.com> Date: Fri Feb 2 06:19:13 2018 -0800 hooks: change the semantic of NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES="" With LXC, you can override the value of an environment variable to null, but you can't unset an existing variable. The NVIDIA hook was previously activated when NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES was set to null. As a result, it was not possible to disable the hook by overriding the environment variable in the configuration. The hook can now be disabled by setting NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES to null or to the new special value "void". Signed-off-by: Felix Abecassis <fabecassis@nvidia.com> commit d6337a5f9dc7311af168aa3d586fdf239f5a10d3 Author: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com> Date: Wed Jan 31 16:25:11 2018 +0100 cgroups: get controllers on the unified hierarchy Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
- When
fork()
ing off a child process use_exit()
to terminate it instead ofexit()
. Theexit()
function is not thread-safe and thus not suited for the shared library which must ensure that it is thread-safe.
- Arrays of
struct
s are:struct foo_struct { int n; int m; int p; }; struct foo_struct new_instance[] = { { 1, 2, 3 }, { 4, 5, 6 }, { 7, 8, 9 }, };
- Leave a single space after the opening
{
and before closing}
of the largest member of the last column. - Always leave a single space between the largest member of the current column and the member in the next column.
- A good example is
struct signame { int num; const char *name; }; static const struct signame signames[] = { { SIGHUP, "HUP" }, { SIGINT, "INT" }, { SIGQUIT, "QUIT" }, { SIGILL, "ILL" }, { SIGABRT, "ABRT" }, { SIGFPE, "FPE" }, { SIGKILL, "KILL" }, { SIGSEGV, "SEGV" }, { SIGPIPE, "PIPE" }, { SIGALRM, "ALRM" }, { SIGTERM, "TERM" }, { SIGUSR1, "USR1" }, { SIGUSR2, "USR2" }, { SIGCHLD, "CHLD" }, { SIGCONT, "CONT" }, { SIGSTOP, "STOP" }, { SIGTSTP, "TSTP" }, { SIGTTIN, "TTIN" }, { SIGTTOU, "TTOU" }, #ifdef SIGTRAP { SIGTRAP, "TRAP" }, #endif #ifdef SIGIOT { SIGIOT, "IOT" }, #endif #ifdef SIGEMT { SIGEMT, "EMT" }, #endif #ifdef SIGBUS { SIGBUS, "BUS" }, #endif #ifdef SIGSTKFLT { SIGSTKFLT, "STKFLT" }, #endif #ifdef SIGCLD { SIGCLD, "CLD" }, #endif #ifdef SIGURG { SIGURG, "URG" }, #endif #ifdef SIGXCPU { SIGXCPU, "XCPU" }, #endif #ifdef SIGXFSZ { SIGXFSZ, "XFSZ" }, #endif #ifdef SIGVTALRM { SIGVTALRM, "VTALRM" }, #endif #ifdef SIGPROF { SIGPROF, "PROF" }, #endif #ifdef SIGWINCH { SIGWINCH, "WINCH" }, #endif #ifdef SIGIO { SIGIO, "IO" }, #endif #ifdef SIGPOLL { SIGPOLL, "POLL" }, #endif #ifdef SIGINFO { SIGINFO, "INFO" }, #endif #ifdef SIGLOST { SIGLOST, "LOST" }, #endif #ifdef SIGPWR { SIGPWR, "PWR" }, #endif #ifdef SIGUNUSED { SIGUNUSED, "UNUSED" }, #endif #ifdef SIGSYS { SIGSYS, "SYS" }, #endif };
When copying strings always use strlcpy()
instead of strncpy()
. The
advantage of strlcpy()
is that it will always append a \0
byte to the
string.
Unless you have a valid reason to accept truncation you must check whether truncation has occurred, treat it as an error, and handle the error appropriately.
When concatenating strings always use strlcat()
instead of strncat()
. The
advantage of strlcat()
is that it will always append a \0
byte to the
string.
Unless you have a valid reason to accept truncation you must check whether truncation has occurred, treat it as an error, and handle the error appropriately.
If LXC detects that the compiler is new enough it will tell it to check
switch
statements for non-documented fallthroughs. Please always place
a __fallthrough__
after a case
which falls through the next one.
int lxc_attach_run_command(void *payload)
{
int ret = -1;
lxc_attach_command_t *cmd = payload;
ret = execvp(cmd->program, cmd->argv);
if (ret < 0) {
switch (errno) {
case ENOEXEC:
ret = 126;
break;
case ENOTDIR:
__fallthrough;
case ENOENT:
ret = 127;
break;
}
}
SYSERROR("Failed to exec \"%s\"", cmd->program);
return ret;
}
LXC does not allow the use of fgets()
. Use getline()
or other methods
instead.
This specifically forbids any usage of alloca()
in the codebase.
LXC has switched from manually cleaning up resources to using cleanup macros
supported by gcc
and clang
:
__attribute__((__cleanup__(<my-cleanup-function-wrapper>)))
We do not allow manually cleanups anymore if there are appropriate macros. Currently the following macros are supported:
/* close file descriptor */
__do_close_prot_errno
/* free allocated memory */
__do_free __attribute__((__cleanup__(__auto_free__)))
/* close FILEs */
__do_fclose __attribute__((__cleanup__(__auto_fclose__)))
/* close DIRs */
__do_closedir __attribute__((__cleanup__(__auto_closedir__)))
For example:
void turn_into_dependent_mounts(void)
{
__do_free char *line = NULL;
__do_fclose FILE *f = NULL;
__do_close int memfd = -EBADF, mntinfo_fd = -EBADF;
int ret;
ssize_t copied;
size_t len = 0;
mntinfo_fd = open("/proc/self/mountinfo", O_RDONLY | O_CLOEXEC);
if (mntinfo_fd < 0) {
SYSERROR("Failed to open \"/proc/self/mountinfo\"");
return;
}
memfd = memfd_create(".lxc_mountinfo", MFD_CLOEXEC);
if (memfd < 0) {
char template[] = P_tmpdir "/.lxc_mountinfo_XXXXXX";
if (errno != ENOSYS) {
SYSERROR("Failed to create temporary in-memory file");
return;
}
memfd = lxc_make_tmpfile(template, true);
if (memfd < 0) {
WARN("Failed to create temporary file");
return;
}
}
again:
copied = lxc_sendfile_nointr(memfd, mntinfo_fd, NULL, LXC_SENDFILE_MAX);
if (copied < 0) {
if (errno == EINTR)
goto again;
SYSERROR("Failed to copy \"/proc/self/mountinfo\"");
return;
}
ret = lseek(memfd, 0, SEEK_SET);
if (ret < 0) {
SYSERROR("Failed to reset file descriptor offset");
return;
}
f = fdopen(memfd, "re");
if (!f) {
SYSERROR("Failed to open copy of \"/proc/self/mountinfo\" to mark all shared. Continuing");
return;
}
/*
* After a successful fdopen() memfd will be closed when calling
* fclose(f). Calling close(memfd) afterwards is undefined.
*/
move_fd(memfd);
while (getline(&line, &len, f) != -1) {
char *opts, *target;
target = get_field(line, 4);
if (!target)
continue;
opts = get_field(target, 2);
if (!opts)
continue;
null_endofword(opts);
if (!strstr(opts, "shared"))
continue;
null_endofword(target);
ret = mount(NULL, target, NULL, MS_SLAVE, NULL);
if (ret < 0) {
SYSERROR("Failed to recursively turn old root mount tree into dependent mount. Continuing...");
continue;
}
TRACE("Recursively turned old root mount tree into dependent mount");
}
TRACE("Turned all mount table entries into dependent mount");
}