Community Guidelines — Microkernel Devroom and Google Summer of Code 2017

On this page, we provide tips for contributors to microkernel-based operating system projects under the umbrella of the Microkernel devroom. The tips are based on previous experience in this area. For official guidance, please consult your mentor.

Interacting with the Community

• The open source community can provide invaluable feedback to your ideas so make sure to interact with the community effectively. Simply put, participate actively on mailing lists, forums, chats and other communication channels.
• Prefer open communication on the mailing lists, forums and chats over one-to-one private communication of any sort.
• Don't be shy, other people don't bite.
• Nobody's perfect.

Implementation

• Do not impose artificial limits on your implementation. For example, if your project is fundamentally platform-neutral, e.g. it is a sophisticated data structure or a new file system, do not restrict the implementation to a single supported processor architecture, byte order or word width.
• Stick to the coding style of the existing code and to the official coding style defined by the project you are contributing to. Your failure to adhere to the given coding style requires someone else's extra work to perform the cleanup after you.
• Adhere to good coding practices, such as adequate commenting, avoiding dense code, using horizontal spacing as visual delimiters and keeping the block nesting level under control. Also pay attention to seemingly subtle and unimportant decisions, such as proper naming of identifiers, following a coherent naming pattern, etc. Remember that the code is written once, but read many times. Do not make it harder for the reader than it is strictly necessary.
• When using third-party code, always give credit where the credit is due and always follow the license of the third-party code.