---
title: Coding Style
+category: Contributing
+layout: default
---
# Coding Style
numeric. Specifically, if you have an `int b` and it's only used in a boolean
sense, by all means check its state with `if (b) …` — but if `b` can actually
have more than two semantic values, and you want to compare for non-zero,
- then please write that explicity with `if (b != 0) …`. This helps readability
+ then please write that explicitly with `if (b != 0) …`. This helps readability
as the value range and semantical behaviour is directly clear from the
condition check. As a special addition: when dealing with pointers which you
want to check for non-NULL-ness, you may also use downgrade-to-bool feature.
p = foobar_unref(p);
```
- which will always work regardless if `p` is initialized or not,x and
+ which will always work regardless if `p` is initialized or not, and
guarantees that `p` is `NULL` afterwards, all in just one line.
## Error Handling
## Deadlocks
-- Do not issue NSS requests (that includes user name and host name lookups)
+- Do not issue NSS requests (that includes user name and hostname lookups)
from PID 1 as this might trigger deadlocks when those lookups involve
synchronously talking to services that we would need to start up.
time you need that please immediately undefine `basename()`, and add a
comment about it, so that no code ever ends up using the POSIX version!
-# Committing to git
+## Committing to git
- Commit message subject lines should be prefixed with an appropriate component
name of some kind. For example "journal: ", "nspawn: " and so on.