C++ Software Design Tips Guidelines Checklist

Posted on March 8th, 2008

C++ Software Design Tips Guidelines Checklist

* Open/close principle
* Prefer free to member functions
* Consider moving private members to the implementation file– pimpl idiom (handle/body, compilation firewall)
* Namespace names after content (not e.g. reverse domain names) and not too deep

“Early optimization is the root of all evil”

– optimize only if it makes sense (e.g. after profiling)
– consider the disadvantages in terms of maintainability/readability

* Consider the pimpl idiom for interface classes
* Code should be reentrant/thread safe
* Prefer code to comments
* Use third ­party libs if good, in particular the standard library and boost

Header files

– Appropriate include guards
– Be independently compilable
– Don’ t impose choices on including TUs

* Useless includes in place of forward declarations
* Using directives and declarations
* Namespace aliases

Exceptions

– “Do I want/can afford stack unwinding here”
– Don’ t use exception specifications, just document them
– Derive from std::exception
– constructor/copy constructor/operator= should be throw()
– Don’ t throw in destructors
– Code should be exception safe

at least basic guarantee possibly, if worth, strong guarantee or nothrow

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