LDC contributor's guide

This page is a work-in-progress collection of tips for LDC contributors and development guidelines.

Style guidelines

Generally, use your good taste and try to use a style similar to the surrounding code. Many parts of the LLVM Coding Standards are directly applicable to LDC as well.

Formatting, etc.

• Hard rules: 4 spaces for indentation, LF newlines.
• Use include guards consistently, in the format LDC_<dir>_<filename>, e.g. LDC_GEN_DVALUE_H.
• Includes are placed at the top of the file, sorted lexicographically and grouped in the following order:
  1. Main include corresponding to the .cpp file, if any.
  2. DMD and other LDC includes.
  3. LLVM/libconfig includes.
  4. System includes.

APIs and idioms

• Use llvm_unreachable("message") instead of assert(0 && "message") (from llvm/Support/ErrorHandling.h). Not only might it lead to slightly better codegen, it also prevents »variable might be used uninitialized« and similar compiler warnings.