1 <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.1//EN" >
2 <book>
3 <title>Nagios Plug-in Developer Guidelines</title>
5 <bookinfo>
6 <authorgroup>
7 <author>
8 <affiliation>
9 <orgname>Nagios Plugins Development Team</orgname>
10 </affiliation>
11 </author>
12 </authorgroup>
14 <pubdate>2006</pubdate>
15 <title>Nagios plug-in development guidelines</title>
17 <revhistory>
18 <revision>
19 <revnumber>$Revision$</revnumber>
20 <date>$Date$</date>
21 </revision>
22 </revhistory>
24 <copyright>
25 <year>2000 - 2006</year>
26 <holder>Nagios Plugins Development Team</holder>
27 </copyright>
29 </bookinfo>
32 <preface id="preface"><title>Preface</title>
33 <para>The purpose of this guidelines is to provide a reference for
34 the plug-in developers and encourage the standarization of the
35 different kind of plug-ins: C, shell, perl, python, etc.</para>
37 <para>Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2006
38 (Nagios Plugins Team)</para>
40 <para>Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim
41 copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this
42 permission notice are preserved on all copies.</para>
44 <para>The plugins themselves are copyrighted by their respective
45 authors.</para>
46 </preface>
48 <article>
49 <section id="DevRequirements"><title>Development platform requirements</title>
50 <para>
51 Nagios plugins are developed to the GNU standard, so any OS which is supported by GNU
52 should run the plugins. While the requirements for compiling the Nagios plugins release
53 is very small, to develop from CVS needs additional software to be installed. These are the
54 minimum levels of software required:
56 <literallayout>
57 gnu make 3.79
58 automake 1.9.2
59 autoconf 2.59
60 gnu m4 1.4.2
61 gnu libtool 1.5
62 </literallayout>
64 To compile from CVS, after you have checked out the code, run:
65 <literallayout>
66 tools/setup
67 ./configure
68 make
69 make install
70 </literallayout>
71 </para>
73 <para>Note: gettext is no longer a developer platform requirement. A lot of the files in lib/ and m4/
74 are synced with the coreutils project and we use the same levels of gettext that they
75 distribute.
76 </para>
77 <para>Note: gnu libtool, which must be at version 1.5.22 or above, has files installed into CVS, so is not
78 a development platform requirement.
79 </para>
80 </section>
82 <section id="PlugOutput"><title>Plugin Output for Nagios</title>
84 <para>You should always print something to STDOUT that tells if the
85 service is working or why it is failing. Try to keep the output short -
86 probably less that 80 characters. Remember that you ideally would like
87 the entire output to appear in a pager message, which will get chopped
88 off after a certain length.</para>
90 <section><title>Print only one line of text</title>
91 <para>Nagios will only grab the first line of text from STDOUT
92 when it notifies contacts about potential problems. If you print
93 multiple lines, you're out of luck. Remember, keep it short and
94 to the point.</para>
96 <para>Output should be in the format:</para>
97 <literallayout>
98 SERVICE STATUS: Information text
99 </literallayout>
100 <para>However, note that this is not a requirement of the API, so you cannot depend on this
101 being an accurate reflection of the status of the service - the status should always
102 be determined by the return code.</para>
103 </section>
105 <section><title>Verbose output</title>
106 <para>Use the -v flag for verbose output. You should allow multiple
107 -v options for additional verbosity, up to a maximum of 3. The standard
108 type of output should be:</para>
110 <table id="verboselevels"><title>Verbose output levels</title>
111 <tgroup cols="2">
112 <thead>
113 <row>
114 <entry><para>Verbosity level</para></entry>
115 <entry><para>Type of output</para></entry>
116 </row>
117 </thead>
118 <tbody>
119 <row>
120 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
121 <entry><para>Single line, minimal output. Summary</para></entry>
122 </row>
123 <row>
124 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
125 <entry><para>Single line, additional information (eg list processes that fail)</para></entry>
126 </row>
127 <row>
128 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
129 <entry><para>Multi line, configuration debug output (eg ps command used)</para></entry>
130 </row>
131 <row>
132 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
133 <entry><para>Lots of detail for plugin problem diagnosis</para></entry>
134 </row>
135 </tbody>
136 </tgroup>
137 </table>
138 </section>
140 <section><title>Screen Output</title>
141 <para>The plug-in should print the diagnostic and just the
142 synopsis part of the help message. A well written plugin would
143 then have --help as a way to get the verbose help.</para>
144 <para>Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
145 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
146 </section>
148 <section><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
149 <para>The return codes below are based on the POSIX spec of returning
150 a positive value. Netsaint prior to v0.0.7 supported non-POSIX
151 compliant return code of "-1" for unknown. Nagios supports POSIX return
152 codes by default.</para>
154 <para>Note: Some plugins will on occasion print on STDOUT that an error
155 occurred and error code is 138 or 255 or some such number. These
156 are usually caused by plugins using system commands and having not
157 enough checks to catch unexpected output. Developers should include a
158 default catch-all for system command output that returns an UNKNOWN
159 return code.</para>
161 <table id="ReturnCodes"><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
162 <tgroup cols="3">
163 <thead>
164 <row>
165 <entry><para>Numeric Value</para></entry>
166 <entry><para>Service Status</para></entry>
167 <entry><para>Status Description</para></entry>
168 </row>
169 </thead>
170 <tbody>
171 <row>
172 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
173 <entry valign="middle"><para>OK</para></entry>
174 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service and it
175 appeared to be functioning properly</para></entry>
176 </row>
177 <row>
178 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
179 <entry valign="middle"><para>Warning</para></entry>
180 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service, but it
181 appeared to be above some "warning" threshold or did not appear
182 to be working properly</para></entry>
183 </row>
184 <row>
185 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
186 <entry valign="middle"><para>Critical</para></entry>
187 <entry><para>The plugin detected that either the service was not
188 running or it was above some "critical" threshold</para></entry>
189 </row>
190 <row>
191 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
192 <entry valign="middle"><para>Unknown</para></entry>
193 <entry><para>Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the
194 plugin or low-level failures internal to the plugin (such as unable to fork,
195 or open a tcp socket) that prevent it from performing the specified
196 operation. Higher-level errors (such as name resolution errors,
197 socket timeouts, etc) are outside of the control of plugins and should
198 generally NOT be reported as UNKNOWN states.
199 </para></entry>
200 </row>
201 </tbody>
202 </tgroup>
203 </table>
206 </section>
208 <section id="thresholdformat"><title>Threshold and ranges</title>
209 <para>A range is defined as a start and end point (inclusive) on a numeric scale (possibly
210 negative or positive infinity).
211 </para>
212 <para>A threshold is a range with an alert level (either warning or critical). Use the
213 set_thresholds(thresholds *, char *, char *) function to set the thresholds.
214 </para>
215 <para>The theory is that the plugin will do some sort of check which returns
216 back a numerical value, or metric, which is then compared to the warning and
217 critical thresholds. Use the get_status(double, thresholds *) function to
218 compare the value against the thresholds.</para>
219 <para>This is the generalised format for ranges:</para>
221 <literallayout>
222 [@]start:end
223 </literallayout>
225 <para>Notes:</para>
226 <orderedlist>
227 <listitem><para>start ≤ end</para>
228 </listitem>
229 <listitem><para>start and ":" is not required if start=0</para>
230 </listitem>
231 <listitem><para>if range is of format "start:" and end is not specified,
232 assume end is infinity</para>
233 </listitem>
234 <listitem><para>to specify negative infinity, use "~"</para>
235 </listitem>
236 <listitem><para>alert is raised if metric is outside start and end range
237 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
238 </listitem>
239 <listitem><para>if range starts with "@", then alert if inside this range
240 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
241 </listitem>
242 </orderedlist>
244 <para>Note: Not all plugins are coded to expect ranges in this format yet.
245 There will be some work in providing multiple metrics.</para>
247 <table id="ExampleRanges"><title>Example ranges</title>
248 <tgroup cols="2">
249 <thead>
250 <row>
251 <entry><para>Range definition</para></entry>
252 <entry><para>Generate an alert if x...</para></entry>
253 </row>
254 </thead>
255 <tbody>
256 <row>
257 <entry>10</entry>
258 <entry>< 0 or > 10, (outside the range of {0 .. 10})</entry>
259 </row>
260 <row>
261 <entry>10:</entry>
262 <entry>< 10, (outside {10 .. ∞})</entry>
263 </row>
264 <row>
265 <entry>~:10</entry>
266 <entry>> 10, (outside the range of {-∞ .. 10})</entry>
267 </row>
268 <row>
269 <entry>10:20</entry>
270 <entry>< 10 or > 20, (outside the range of {10 .. 20})</entry>
271 </row>
272 <row>
273 <entry>@10:20</entry>
274 <entry>≥ 10 and ≤ 20, (inside the range of {10 .. 20})</entry>
275 </row>
276 <row>
277 <entry>10</entry>
278 <entry>< 0 or > 10, (outside the range of {0 .. 10})</entry>
279 </row>
280 </tbody>
281 </tgroup>
282 </table>
283 <table id="CommandLineExamples"><title>Command line examples</title>
284 <tgroup cols="2">
285 <thead>
286 <row>
287 <entry><para>Command line</para></entry>
288 <entry><para>Meaning</para></entry>
289 </row>
290 </thead>
291 <tbody>
292 <row>
293 <entry>check_stuff -w10 -c20</entry>
294 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is over 20, else warn if over 10 (will be critical if "stuff" is less than 0)</entry>
295 </row>
296 <row>
297 <entry>check_stuff -w~:10 -c~:20</entry>
298 <entry>Same as above. Negative "stuff" is OK</entry>
299 </row>
300 <row>
301 <entry>check_stuff -w10: -c20</entry>
302 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is over 20, else warn if "stuff" is below 10 (will be critical if "stuff" is less than 0)</entry>
303 </row>
304 <row>
305 <entry>check_stuff -c1:</entry>
306 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is less than 1</entry>
307 </row>
308 <row>
309 <entry>check_stuff -w~:0 -c10</entry>
310 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is above 10; Warn if "stuff" is above zero</entry>
311 </row>
312 <row>
313 <entry>check_stuff -c5:6</entry>
314 <entry>The only noncritical range is 5:6</entry>
315 </row>
316 <row>
317 <entry>check_stuff -c10:20</entry>
318 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is 10 to 20</entry>
319 </row>
320 </tbody>
321 </tgroup>
322 </table>
323 </section>
325 <section><title>Performance data</title>
326 <para>Performance data is defined by Nagios as "everything after the | of the plugin output" -
327 please refer to Nagios documentation for information on capturing this data to logfiles.
328 However, it is the responsibility of the plugin writer to ensure the
329 performance data is in a "Nagios plugins" format.
330 This is the expected format:</para>
332 <literallayout>
333 'label'=value[UOM];[warn];[crit];[min];[max]
334 </literallayout>
336 <para>Notes:</para>
337 <orderedlist>
338 <listitem><para>space separated list of label/value pairs</para>
339 </listitem>
340 <listitem><para>label can contain any characters</para>
341 </listitem>
342 <listitem><para>the single quotes for the label are optional. Required if
343 spaces, = or ' are in the label</para>
344 </listitem>
345 <listitem><para>label length is arbitrary, but ideally the first 19 characters
346 are unique (due to a limitation in RRD). Be aware of a limitation in the
347 amount of data that NRPE returns to Nagios</para>
348 </listitem>
349 <listitem><para>to specify a quote character, use two single quotes</para>
350 </listitem>
351 <listitem><para>warn, crit, min or max may be null (for example, if the threshold is
352 not defined or min and max do not apply). Trailing unfilled semicolons can be
353 dropped</para>
354 </listitem>
355 <listitem><para>min and max are not required if UOM=%</para>
356 </listitem>
357 <listitem><para>value, min and max in class [-0-9.]. Must all be the
358 same UOM</para>
359 </listitem>
360 <listitem><para>warn and crit are in the range format (see
361 <xref linkend="thresholdformat">). Must be the same UOM</para>
362 </listitem>
363 <listitem><para>UOM (unit of measurement) is one of:</para>
364 <orderedlist>
365 <listitem><para>no unit specified - assume a number (int or float)
366 of things (eg, users, processes, load averages)</para>
367 </listitem>
368 <listitem><para>s - seconds (also us, ms)</para></listitem>
369 <listitem><para>% - percentage</para></listitem>
370 <listitem><para>B - bytes (also KB, MB, TB)</para></listitem>
371 <listitem><para>c - a continous counter (such as bytes
372 transmitted on an interface)</para></listitem>
373 </orderedlist>
374 </listitem>
375 </orderedlist>
377 <para>It is up to third party programs to convert the Nagios plugins
378 performance data into graphs.</para>
379 </section>
381 <section><title>Translations</title>
382 <para>If possible, use translation tools for all output to respect the user's language
383 settings. See <xref linkend="translationsdevelopers"> for guidelines
384 for the core plugins.
385 </para>
386 </section>
387 </section>
389 <section id="SysCmdAuxFiles"><title>System Commands and Auxiliary Files</title>
391 <section><title>Don't execute system commands without specifying their
392 full path</title>
393 <para>Don't use exec(), popen(), etc. to execute external
394 commands without explicity using the full path of the external
395 program.</para>
397 <para>Doing otherwise makes the plugin vulnerable to hijacking
398 by a trojan horse earlier in the search path. See the main
399 plugin distribution for examples on how this is done.</para>
400 </section>
402 <section><title>Use spopen() if external commands must be executed</title>
404 <para>If you have to execute external commands from within your
405 plugin and you're writing it in C, use the spopen() function
406 that Karl DeBisschop has written.</para>
408 <para>The code for spopen() and spclose() is included with the
409 core plugin distribution.</para>
410 </section>
412 <section><title>Don't make temp files unless absolutely required</title>
414 <para>If temp files are needed, make sure that the plugin will
415 fail cleanly if the file can't be written (e.g., too few file
416 handles, out of disk space, incorrect permissions, etc.) and
417 delete the temp file when processing is complete.</para>
418 </section>
420 <section><title>Don't be tricked into following symlinks</title>
422 <para>If your plugin opens any files, take steps to ensure that
423 you are not following a symlink to another location on the
424 system.</para>
425 </section>
427 <section><title>Validate all input</title>
429 <para>use routines in utils.c or utils.pm and write more as needed</para>
430 </section>
432 </section>
437 <section id="PerlPlugin"><title>Perl Plugins</title>
439 <para>Perl plugins are coded a little more defensively than other
440 plugins because of embedded Perl. When configured as such, embedded
441 Perl Nagios (ePN) requires stricter use of the some of Perl's features.
442 This section outlines some of the steps needed to use ePN
443 effectively.</para>
445 <orderedlist>
447 <listitem><para> Do not use BEGIN and END blocks since they will be called
448 only once (when Nagios starts and shuts down) with Embedded Perl (ePN). In
449 particular, do not use BEGIN blocks to initialize variables.</para>
450 </listitem>
452 <listitem><para>To use utils.pm, you need to provide a full path to the
453 module in order for it to work.</para>
455 <literallayout>
456 e.g.
457 use lib "/usr/local/nagios/libexec";
458 use utils qw(...);
459 </literallayout>
460 </listitem>
462 <listitem><para>Perl scripts should be called with "-w"</para>
463 </listitem>
465 <listitem><para>All Perl plugins must compile cleanly under "use strict" - i.e. at
466 least explicitly package names as in "$main::x" or predeclare every
467 variable. </para>
470 <para>Explicitly initialize each variable in use. Otherwise with
471 caching enabled, the plugin will not be recompiled each time, and
472 therefore Perl will not reinitialize all the variables. All old
473 variable values will still be in effect.</para>
474 </listitem>
476 <listitem><para>Do not use >DATA< handles (these simply do not compile under ePN).</para>
477 </listitem>
479 <listitem><para>Do not use global variables in named subroutines. This is bad practise anyway, but with ePN the
480 compiler will report an error "<global_var> will not stay shared ..". Values used by
481 subroutines should be passed in the argument list.</para>
482 </listitem>
484 <listitem><para>If writing to a file (perhaps recording
485 performance data) explicitly close close it. The plugin never
486 calls <emphasis role="strong">exit</emphasis>; that is caught by
487 p1.pl, so output streams are never closed.</para>
488 </listitem>
490 <listitem><para>As in <xref linkend="runtime"> all plugins need
491 to monitor their runtime, specially if they are using network
492 resources. Use of the <emphasis>alarm</emphasis> is recommended
493 noting that some Perl modules (eg LWP) manage timers, so that an alarm
494 set by a plugin using such a module is overwritten by the module.
495 (workarounds are cunning (TM) or using the module timer)
496 Plugins may import a default time out ($TIMEOUT) from utils.pm.
497 </para>
498 </listitem>
500 <listitem><para>Perl plugins should import %ERRORS from utils.pm
501 and then "exit $ERRORS{'OK'}" rather than "exit 0"
502 </para>
503 </listitem>
505 </orderedlist>
507 </section>
509 <section id="runtime"><title>Runtime Timeouts</title>
511 <para>Plugins have a very limited runtime - typically 10 sec.
512 As a result, it is very important for plugins to maintain internal
513 code to exit if runtime exceeds a threshold. </para>
515 <para>All plugins should timeout gracefully, not just networking
516 plugins. For instance, df may lock if you have automounted
517 drives and your network fails - but on first glance, who'd think
518 df could lock up like that. Plus, it should just be more error
519 resistant to be able to time out rather than consume
520 resources.</para>
522 <section><title>Use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT</title>
524 <para>All network plugins should use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT to timeout</para>
526 </section>
529 <section><title>Add alarms to network plugins</title>
531 <para>If you write a plugin which communicates with another
532 networked host, you should make sure to set an alarm() in your
533 code that prevents the plugin from hanging due to abnormal
534 socket closures, etc. Nagios takes steps to protect itself
535 against unruly plugins that timeout, but any plugins you create
536 should be well behaved on their own.</para>
538 </section>
542 </section>
544 <section id="PlugOptions"><title>Plugin Options</title>
546 <para>A well written plugin should have --help as a way to get
547 verbose help. Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
548 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
550 <section><title>Option Processing</title>
552 <para>For plugins written in C, we recommend the C standard
553 getopt library for short options. Getopt_long is always available.
554 </para>
556 <para>For plugins written in Perl, we recommend Getopt::Long module.</para>
558 <para>Positional arguments are strongly discouraged.</para>
560 <para>There are a few reserved options that should not be used
561 for other purposes:</para>
563 <literallayout>
564 -V version (--version)
565 -h help (--help)
566 -t timeout (--timeout)
567 -w warning threshold (--warning)
568 -c critical threshold (--critical)
569 -H hostname (--hostname)
570 -v verbose (--verbose)
571 </literallayout>
573 <para>In addition to the reserved options above, some other standard options are:</para>
575 <literallayout>
576 -C SNMP community (--community)
577 -a authentication password (--authentication)
578 -l login name (--logname)
579 -p port or password (--port or --passwd/--password)monitors operational
580 -u url or username (--url or --username)
581 </literallayout>
583 <para>Look at check_pgsql and check_procs to see how I currently
584 think this can work. Standard options are:</para>
587 <para>The option -V or --version should be present in all
588 plugins. For C plugins it should result in a call to print_revision, a
589 function in utils.c which takes two character arguments, the
590 command name and the plugin revision.</para>
592 <para>The -? option, or any other unparsable set of options,
593 should print out a short usage statement. Character width should
594 be 80 and less and no more that 23 lines should be printed (it
595 should display cleanly on a dumb terminal in a server
596 room).</para>
598 <para>The option -h or --help should be present in all plugins.
599 In C plugins, it should result in a call to print_help (or
600 equivalent). The function print_help should call print_revision,
601 then print_usage, then should provide detailed
602 help. Help text should fit on an 80-character width display, but
603 may run as many lines as needed.</para>
605 <para>The option -v or --verbose should be present in all plugins.
606 The user should be allowed to specify -v multiple times to increase
607 the verbosity level, as described in <xref linkend="verboselevels">.</para>
608 </section>
610 <section>
611 <title>Plugins with more than one type of threshold, or with
612 threshold ranges</title>
614 <para>Old style was to do things like -ct for critical time and
615 -cv for critical value. That goes out the window with POSIX
616 getopt. The allowable alternatives are:</para>
618 <orderedlist>
619 <listitem>
620 <para>long options like -critical-time (or -ct and -cv, I
621 suppose).</para>
622 </listitem>
624 <listitem>
625 <para>repeated options like `check_load -w 10 -w 6 -w 4 -c
626 16 -c 10 -c 10`</para>
627 </listitem>
629 <listitem>
630 <para>for brevity, the above can be expressed as `check_load
631 -w 10,6,4 -c 16,10,10`</para>
632 </listitem>
634 <listitem>
635 <para>ranges are expressed with colons as in `check_procs -C
636 httpd -w 1:20 -c 1:30` which will warn above 20 instances,
637 and critical at 0 and above 30</para>
638 </listitem>
640 <listitem>
641 <para>lists are expressed with commas, so Jacob's check_nmap
642 uses constructs like '-p 1000,1010,1050:1060,2000'</para>
643 </listitem>
645 <listitem>
646 <para>If possible when writing lists, use tokens to make the
647 list easy to remember and non-order dependent - so
648 check_disk uses '-c 10000,10%' so that it is clear which is
649 the precentage and which is the KB values (note that due to
650 my own lack of foresight, that used to be '-c 10000:10%' but
651 such constructs should all be changed for consistency,
652 though providing reverse compatibility is fairly
653 easy).</para>
654 </listitem>
656 </orderedlist>
658 <para>As always, comments are welcome - making this consistent
659 without a host of long options was quite a hassle, and I would
660 suspect that there are flaws in this strategy.
661 </para>
662 </section>
663 </section>
665 <section id="Testcases"><title>Test cases</title>
666 <para>
667 Tests are the best way of knowing if the plugins work as expected. Please
668 create and update test cases where possible.
669 </para>
671 <para>
672 To run a test, from the top level directory, run "make test". This will run
673 all the current tests and report an overall success rate.
674 </para>
676 <para>
677 See the <ulink url="http://tinderbox.altinity.org">Nagios Plugins Tinderbox server</ulink>
678 for the daily test results.
679 </para>
681 <section><title>Test cases for plugins</title>
682 <para>These use perl's Test::More. To do a one time test, run "cd plugins && perl t/check_disk.t".
683 </para>
685 <para>There will somtimes be failures seen in this output which are known failures that
686 need to be fixed. As long as the return code is 0, it will be reported as "test pass".
687 (If you have a fix so that the specific test passes, that will be gratefully received!)
688 </para>
690 <para>
691 If you want a summary test, run: "cd plugins && prove t/check_disk.t".
692 This runs the test in a summary format.
693 </para>
695 <para>
696 For a good and amusing tutorial on using Test::More, see this
697 <ulink url="http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Test-Simple-0.62/lib/Test/Tutorial.pod">
698 link</ulink>
699 </para>
701 </section>
703 <section><title>Testing the C library functions</title>
704 <para>
705 We use <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/LibTap">the libtap library</ulink>, which gives
706 perl's TAP
707 (Test Anything Protocol) output. This is used by the FreeBSD team for their regression testing.
708 </para>
710 <para>
711 To run tests using the libtap library, download the latest tar ball and extract.
712 There is a problem with tap-1.01 where
713 <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/25">pthread support doesn't appear to work</ulink>
714 properly on non-FreeBSD systems. Install with 'CPPFLAGS="-UHAVE_LIBPTHREAD" ./configure && make && make check && make install'.
715 </para>
717 <para>
718 When you run Nagios Plugins' configure, it will look for the tap library and will automatically
719 setup the tests. Run "make test" to run all the tests.
720 </para>
721 </section>
723 </section>
724 <section id="CodingGuidelines"><title>Coding guidelines</title>
725 <para>See <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html">GNU
726 Coding standards</ulink> for general guidelines.</para>
727 <section><title>C coding</title>
729 <para>Variables should be declared at the beginning of code blocks and
730 not inline because of portability with older compilers.</para>
732 <para>You should use /* */ for comments and not // as some compilers
733 do not handle the latter form.</para>
734 </section>
736 <section><title>Crediting sources</title>
737 <para>If you have copied a routine from another source, make sure the licence
738 from your source allows this. Add a comment referencing the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
739 file, where you can put more detail about the source.</para>
740 <para>For contributed code, do not add any named credits in the source code
741 - contributors should be added into the THANKS.in file instead.
742 </para>
743 </section>
745 <section><title>CVS comments</title>
746 <para>If the change is due to a contribution, please quote the contributor's name
747 and, if applicable, add the SourceForge Tracker number. Don't forget to
748 update the THANKS.in file.</para>
749 <para>If you have a change that is useful for noting in the next release, please
750 update the NEWS file.</para>
751 <para>All CVS commit comments will be written to a ChangeLog at release time.
752 </para>
753 </section>
755 <section id="translationsdevelopers"><title>Translations for developers</title>
756 <para>To make the job easier for translators, please follow these guidelines:</para>
757 <orderedlist>
758 <listitem><para>
759 Before creating new strings, check the po/nagios-plugins.pot file to
760 see if a similar string
761 already exists
762 </para></listitem>
763 <listitem><para>
764 For help texts, break into individual options so that these can be reused
765 between plugins
766 </para></listitem>
767 <listitem><para>Try to avoid linefeeds unless you are working on a block of text</para></listitem>
768 <listitem><para>Short help is not translated</para></listitem>
769 <listitem><para>Long help has options in English language, but text translated</para></listitem>
770 <listitem><para>"Copyright" kept in English</para></listitem>
771 <listitem><para>Copyright holder names kept in original text</para></listitem>
772 <listitem><para>Debugging output does not need to be translated</para></listitem>
773 </orderedlist>
774 </section>
776 <section><title>Translations for translators</title>
777 <para>To create an up to date list of translatable strings, run: tools/gen_locale.sh</para>
778 </section>
780 </section>
782 <section id="SubmittingChanges"><title>Submission of new plugins and patches</title>
784 <section id="Patches"><title>Patches</title>
785 <para>If you have a bug patch, please supply a unified or context diff against the
786 version you are using. For new features, please supply a diff against
787 the CVS HEAD version.</para>
789 <para>Patches should be submitted via
790 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=29880&atid=397599">SourceForge's
791 tracker system for Nagiosplug patches</ulink>
792 and be announced to the nagiosplug-devel mailing list.</para>
794 <para>Submission of a patch implies that the submmitter acknowledges that they
795 are the author of the code (or have permission from the author to release the code)
796 and agree that the code can be released under the GPL. The copyright for the changes will
797 then revert to the Nagios Plugin Development Team - this is required so that any copyright
798 infringements can be investigated quickly without contacting a huge list of copyright holders.
799 Credit will always be given for any patches through a THANKS file in the distribution.</para>
800 </section>
803 <section id="Contributedplugins"><title>Contributed plugins</title>
804 <para>Plugins that have been contributed to the project and
805 distributed with the Nagios Plugin files are held in the contrib/ directory and are not installed
806 by default. These plugins are not officially supported by the team.
807 The current policy is that these plugins should be owned and maintained by the original
808 contributor, preferably hosted on <ulink url="http://www.nagiosexchange.org">NagiosExchange</ulink>.
809 </para>
810 <para>If patches or bugs are raised to an contributed plugin, we will start communications with the
811 original contributor, but seek to remove the plugin from our distribution.
812 </para>
813 <para>The aim is to distribute only code that the Nagios Plugin team are responsible for.
814 </para>
815 </section>
817 <section id="Newplugins"><title>New plugins</title>
818 <para>If you would like others to use your plugins, please add it to
819 the official 3rd party plugin repository,
820 <ulink url="http://www.nagiosexchange.org">NagiosExchange</ulink>.
821 </para>
823 <para>We are not accepting requests for inclusion of plugins into
824 our distribution at the moment, but when we do, these are the minimum
825 requirements:
826 </para>
828 <orderedlist>
829 <listitem>
830 <para>Include copyright and license information in all files. Copyright must be solely
831 granted to the Nagios Plugin Development Team</para>
832 </listitem>
833 <listitem>
834 <para>The standard command options are supported (--help, --version,
835 --timeout, --warning, --critical)</para>
836 </listitem>
837 <listitem>
838 <para>It is determined to be not redundant (for instance, we would not
839 add a new version of check_disk just because someone had provide
840 a plugin that had perf checking - we would incorporate the features
841 into an exisiting plugin)</para>
842 </listitem>
843 <listitem>
844 <para>One of the developers has had the time to audit the code and declare
845 it ready for core</para>
846 </listitem>
847 <listitem>
848 <para>It should also follow code format guidelines, and use functions from
849 utils (perl or c or sh) rather than using its own</para>
850 </listitem>
851 <listitem>
852 <para>Includes patches to configure.in if required (via the EXTRAS list if
853 it will only work on some platforms)</para>
854 </listitem>
855 <listitem>
856 <para>If possible, please submit a test harness. Documentation on sample
857 tests coming soon</para>
858 </listitem>
859 </orderedlist>
861 </section>
863 </section>
864 </article>
866 </book>