GNU Coding Standards

Last updated March 13, 1998.

• 1 About the GNU Coding Standards
• 2 Keeping Free Software Free
  • 2.1 Referring to Proprietary Programs
  • 2.2 Accepting Contributions
• 3 General Program Design
  • 3.1 Compatibility with Other Implementations
  • 3.2 Using Non-standard Features
  • 3.3 ANSI C and pre-ANSI C
  • 3.4 Using Languages Other Than C
• 4 Program Behavior for All Programs
  • 4.1 Writing Robust Programs
  • 4.2 Library Behavior
  • 4.3 Formatting Error Messages
  • 4.4 Standards for Command Line Interfaces
  • 4.5 Table of Long Options
  • 4.6 Memory Usage
• 5 Making The Best Use of C
  • 5.1 Formatting Your Source Code
  • 5.2 Commenting Your Work
  • 5.3 Clean Use of C Constructs
  • 5.4 Naming Variables and Functions
  • 5.5 Portability between System Types
  • 5.6 Portability between CPUs
  • 5.7 Calling System Functions
  • 5.8 Internationalization
  • 5.9 Mmap
• 6 Documenting Programs
  • 6.1 GNU Manuals
  • 6.2 Manual Structure Details
  • 6.3 The NEWS File
  • 6.4 Change Logs
    • 6.4.1 Change Log Concepts
    • 6.4.2 Style of Change Logs
    • 6.4.3 Simple Changes
    • 6.4.4 Conditional Changes
  • 6.5 Man Pages
  • 6.6 Reading other Manuals
• 7 The Release Process
  • 7.1 How Configuration Should Work
• 8 Makefile Conventions
  • 8.1 General Conventions for Makefiles
  • 8.2 Utilities in Makefiles
  • 8.3 Variables for Specifying Commands
  • 8.4 Variables for Installation Directories
  • 8.5 Standard Targets for Users
  • 8.6 Install Command Categories
  • 8.7 Making Releases

This document was generated on 7 June 2000 using the texi2html translator version 1.51a.