Coding conventions

General guidelines

In general all code in the project should follow the following conventions. Sometimes a few exceptions may be acceptable if it is not possible/practical to follow these rules.

1. Use only 80 columns. Break lines if needed.
2. Use lowercase first and (perhaps) underscores for function names: copy_to()
3. Classes are capitalized: Element, MyClass
4. Use lowercase first and no underscores for ‘regular’ public attributes: vt0, isNonlinear
5. For attributes added to arbitrary instances use a unique prefix that ends with and underscore to avoid conflict with internal attributes. Example: nD_ (used in nodal.py)
6. Use underscore first for private attributes: _privateVar
7. module names: first letter lowercase and no underscores: circuit, paramset

Documentation

Keep doctrings for modules up to date. Consider writing some preliminary documentation before implementing a new feature. That documentation will be included in the module reference. The User’s Manual entry for device models is automatically generated from the doc string of the Device class. Similarly, for analyses use the doctring from the Analysis class in the corresponding module.

Version Numbers

Starting with version 0.4.1, .dev is appended at the end of a version number while the version evolves, i.e., changes are commited to that version. Once a version is deemed to be released, the .dev part should be stripped and the commit tagged with version-0.x.y. An increment in x indicates that a major feature has been added (such as a new analysis type, major re-write of code, etc.). Otherwise, y is incremented.

Version 1.0 will be released when the following features are implemented:

• Basic analyses are efficient: DC, AC, Transient
• Frequency-defined devices are supported in all analyses
• Time-delay interface is stable and implemented for all analyses
• Netlist syntax and interfaces in general are mostly stable