Adhere to Rust API Guidelines

[auscompgeek]

See https://rust-lang.github.io/api-guidelines/ for details.

---

• Naming (crate aligns with Rust naming conventions)
  • Casing conforms to RFC 430 (C-CASE)
  • Ad-hoc conversions follow as_, to_, into_ conventions (C-CONV)
  • Getter names follow Rust convention (C-GETTER)
  • Methods on collections that produce iterators follow iter, iter_mut, into_iter (C-ITER)
  • Iterator type names match the methods that produce them (C-ITER-TY)
  • Feature names are free of placeholder words (C-FEATURE)
  • Names use a consistent word order (C-WORD-ORDER)
• Interoperability (crate interacts nicely with other library functionality)
  • Types eagerly implement common traits (C-COMMON-TRAITS)
    • Copy, Clone, Eq, PartialEq, Hash
    • Ord, PartialOrd
    • Debug
    • Display
    • Default
  • Conversions use the standard traits From, AsRef, AsMut (C-CONV-TRAITS)
  • Collections implement FromIterator and Extend (C-COLLECT)
  • Data structures implement Serde's Serialize, Deserialize (C-SERDE)
  • Types are Send and Sync where possible (C-SEND-SYNC)
  • Error types are meaningful and well-behaved (C-GOOD-ERR)
  • Binary number types provide Hex, Octal, Binary formatting (C-NUM-FMT)
  • Generic reader/writer functions take R: Read and W: Write by value (C-RW-VALUE)
• Macros (crate presents well-behaved macros)
  • Input syntax is evocative of the output (C-EVOCATIVE)
  • Macros compose well with attributes (C-MACRO-ATTR)
  • Item macros work anywhere that items are allowed (C-ANYWHERE)
  • Item macros support visibility specifiers (C-MACRO-VIS)
  • Type fragments are flexible (C-MACRO-TY)
• Documentation (crate is abundantly documented)
  • Crate level docs are thorough and include examples (C-CRATE-DOC)
  • All items have a rustdoc example (C-EXAMPLE)
  • Examples use ?, not try!, not unwrap (C-QUESTION-MARK)
  • Function docs include error, panic, and safety considerations (C-FAILURE)
  • Prose contains hyperlinks to relevant things (C-LINK)
  • Cargo.toml includes all common metadata (C-METADATA)
    • authors, description, license, homepage, documentation, repository,
      readme, keywords, categories
  • Crate sets html_root_url attribute "https://docs.rs/CRATE/X.Y.Z" (C-HTML-ROOT)
  • Release notes document all significant changes (C-RELNOTES)
  • Rustdoc does not show unhelpful implementation details (C-HIDDEN)
• Predictability (crate enables legible code that acts how it looks)
  • Smart pointers do not add inherent methods (C-SMART-PTR)
  • Conversions live on the most specific type involved (C-CONV-SPECIFIC)
  • Functions with a clear receiver are methods (C-METHOD)
  • Functions do not take out-parameters (C-NO-OUT)
  • Operator overloads are unsurprising (C-OVERLOAD)
  • Only smart pointers implement Deref and DerefMut (C-DEREF)
  • Constructors are static, inherent methods (C-CTOR)
• Flexibility (crate supports diverse real-world use cases)
  • Functions expose intermediate results to avoid duplicate work (C-INTERMEDIATE)
  • Caller decides where to copy and place data (C-CALLER-CONTROL)
  • Functions minimize assumptions about parameters by using generics (C-GENERIC)
  • Traits are object-safe if they may be useful as a trait object (C-OBJECT)
• Type safety (crate leverages the type system effectively)
  • Newtypes provide static distinctions (C-NEWTYPE)
  • Arguments convey meaning through types, not bool or Option (C-CUSTOM-TYPE)
  • Types for a set of flags are bitflags, not enums (C-BITFLAG)
  • Builders enable construction of complex values (C-BUILDER)
• Dependability (crate is unlikely to do the wrong thing)
  • Functions validate their arguments (C-VALIDATE)
  • Destructors never fail (C-DTOR-FAIL)
  • Destructors that may block have alternatives (C-DTOR-BLOCK)
• Debuggability (crate is conducive to easy debugging)
  • All public types implement Debug (C-DEBUG)
  • Debug representation is never empty (C-DEBUG-NONEMPTY)
• Future proofing (crate is free to improve without breaking users' code)
  • Sealed traits protect against downstream implementations (C-SEALED)
  • Structs have private fields (C-STRUCT-PRIVATE)
  • Newtypes encapsulate implementation details (C-NEWTYPE-HIDE)
  • Data structures do not duplicate derived trait bounds (C-STRUCT-BOUNDS)
• Necessities (to whom they matter, they really matter)
  • Public dependencies of a stable crate are stable (C-STABLE)
  • Crate and its dependencies have a permissive license (C-PERMISSIVE) Relicense wpilib crate #16

[Lytigas]

Thanks for putting in this list. If anyone could help go through and point out problems they see that would be great; I don't have much free time for this right now.

[inquisitivecrystal]

This is up my alley, but it's a big task. So I'm going to try to do some work on it, but that doesn't mean that I'm opposed to another person helping if they're interested .

[inquisitivecrystal]

@Lytigas In the necessities section, we are non-compliant with C-PERMISSIVE. It's listed as a necessity for good reasons: it's necessary for some people to be able to use the library. I know you disagree with my opinion here, but please seriously consider dual MIT/Apache. It's not just my recommendation, it's part of the lib team's guidelines for being a part of the rust ecosystem.

If you refuse to consider changing the license (which IMO you should), you should strike through that item on the checklist and mark it WONTFIX.

[auscompgeek]

+1 to the note above. I feel GPLv3 isn't appropriate for a library, and given that this is essentially a derivative of a BSD project, the licensing is very odd.

[inquisitivecrystal]

@Lytigas Any reply?

[Lytigas]

For posterity I'll include here that the project has been re-licensed.

[Lytigas]

One thing we'll have to get straight is whether our setters will be traditional C++ style or Rust-style get_mut() -> &mut i32.

[inquisitivecrystal]

I'm signing off on C-METADATA.

[jmeggitt]

@Lytigas, I think it would be better to take the rust approach since using rust is what this entire project is all about. Also, I have a feeling some clippy lints might complain about doing it the C++ way.

[auscompgeek]

WPILib have a lot of technical debt anyway. Trying to write idiomatic Rust should help us move away from that (which is the reason behind a couple of the open PRs here).

[Cynosure-null]

I assume this issue still needs a bit of work, should I try to work on it a bit? I'm not great with Rust but this feels like a good place to learn.