do not crash when attributes are not present; replace by defaults instead

[enigma2.git] / doc / RULES

diff --git a/doc/RULES b/doc/RULES
index 33747663539e06fe6212875eab076a34e3793813..55aa4bf40e71d50c8940e22fd75a6c971003148c 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/RULES
+++ b/doc/RULES
@@ -93,3 +93,36 @@ after. Empty lines are definitely preferred to save bandwidth.
 An ascii file ends with \n, and preferrable not with other empty lines.
 
 That means: make sure the last line doesn't contain any characters, thanks.
+
+5.) usage of 'print'
+
+While it's great to dump out debug stuff, especially if your code can crash,
+expect your code to be stable at some point.
+
+At that point, others might get annoyed by the debug output created by your
+code. That's no problem, they can remove it, but they have to find them
+first.
+
+Using "print obj" with obj being some object, preferably a complex one, is a
+good way to ensure that nobody is able to remove your debug output - because
+nobody finds it!
+
+Please, always prepend something before which can be grepped. Anything, just
+not nothing. Going trough all prints to find the offending one is definitely
+no fun. Something like "print 'obj', obj" is fine. Something like "print 
+'mySpecialPlugin actionmap is', actionMap" is even better.
+
+6.) usage of 'import'
+
+Please avoid 'import *'.
+Use "from foo import bar" only if bar is clearly identifiable to belong to
+foo (e.g.: it's ok to "from Screens.MessageBox import MessageBox", but it's
+not ok to do "from os import path". Use "import os.path", then os.path.fnc.
+Of course "from os.path import *" is even worse.)
+
+7.-99.) Threads are bad.
+
+(Unless they are worker threads. And sleep()ing is definitely not working.
+So if you every having a thread which sleeps, you did something wrong. There
+are eTimers, and not knowing how to use them is no excuse to throw aways all
+enigma code design concepts.)