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<bookinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
- <firstname>Karl</firstname>
- <surname>DeBisschop</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>karl@debisschop.net</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Ethan</firstname>
- <surname>Galstad</surname>
- <authorblurb>
- <para>Author of Nagios</para>
- <para><ulink url="http://www.nagios.org"></ulink></para>
- </authorblurb>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>netsaint@linuxbox.com</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Hugo</firstname>
- <surname>Gayosso</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>hgayosso@gnu.org</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Subhendu</firstname>
- <surname>Ghosh</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>sghosh@sourceforge.net</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Stanley</firstname>
- <surname>Hopcroft</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>stanleyhopcroft@sourceforge.net</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Ton</firstname>
- <surname>Voon</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>tonvoon@users.sourceforge.net</email></address>
- </affiliation>
- </author>
-
- <author>
- <firstname>Jeremy T</firstname>
- <surname>Bouse</surname>
- <affiliation>
- <address><email>undrgrid@users.sourceforge.net</email></address>
- </affiliation>
+ <affiliation>
+ <orgname>Nagios Plugins Development Team</orgname>
+ </affiliation>
</author>
</authorgroup>
- <pubdate>2002</pubdate>
+ <pubdate>2005</pubdate>
<title>Nagios plug-in development guidelines</title>
<revhistory>
</revhistory>
<copyright>
- <year>2000 - 2004</year>
+ <year>2000 - 2005</year>
<holder>Nagios Plugins Development Team</holder>
</copyright>
the plug-in developers and encourage the standarization of the
different kind of plug-ins: C, shell, perl, python, etc.</para>
- <para>Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2003
- (Karl DeBisschop, Ethan Galstad, Stanley Hopcroft, Subhendu Ghosh, Ton Voon, Jeremy T. Bouse)</para>
+ <para>Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2005
+ (Nagios Plugins Team)</para>
<para>Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim
copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this
<literallayout>
gnu make 3.79
- automake 1.6
- autoconf 2.54
+ automake 1.8
+ autoconf 2.58
gettext 0.11.5
</literallayout>
-v options for additional verbosity, up to a maximum of 3. The standard
type of output should be:</para>
- <table id="verbose_levels"><title>Verbose output levels</title>
+ <table id="verboselevels"><title>Verbose output levels</title>
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<para>Notes:</para>
<orderedlist>
- <listitem><para>start > end></para>
+ <listitem><para>start > end</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>start and ":" is not required if start=0</para>
</listitem>
same UOM</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>warn and crit are in the range format (see
- <xref linkend="thresholdformat">)</para>
+ <xref linkend="thresholdformat">). Must be the same UOM</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>UOM (unit of measurement) is one of:</para>
<orderedlist>
<para>It is up to third party programs to convert the Nagios plugins
performance data into graphs.</para>
</section>
+
+ <section><title>Translations</title>
+ <para>If possible, use translation tools for all output. Currently, most of the core C plugins
+ use gettext for translation. General guidelines are:</para>
+
+ <orderedlist>
+ <listitem><para>short help is not translated</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>long help has options in English language, but text translated</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>"Copyright" kept in English</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>copyright holder names kept in original text</para></listitem>
+ </orderedlist>
+ </section>
</section>
<section id="SysCmdAuxFiles"><title>System Commands and Auxiliary Files</title>
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para> Do not use BEGIN and END blocks since they will be called
- the first time and when Nagios shuts down with Embedded Perl (ePN). In
+ only once (when Nagios starts and shuts down) with Embedded Perl (ePN). In
particular, do not use BEGIN blocks to initialize variables.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>To use utils.pm, you need to provide a full path to the
- module in order for it to work with ePN.</para>
+ module in order for it to work.</para>
<literallayout>
e.g.
variable. </para>
- <para>Explicitly initialize each varialable in use. Otherwise with
- caching enabled, the plugin will not be recompilied each time, and
+ <para>Explicitly initialize each variable in use. Otherwise with
+ caching enabled, the plugin will not be recompiled each time, and
therefore Perl will not reinitialize all the variables. All old
variable values will still be in effect.</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem><para>Do not use > DATA < (these simply do not compile under ePN).</para>
+ <listitem><para>Do not use >DATA< handles (these simply do not compile under ePN).</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem><para>Do not use named subroutines</para>
+ <listitem><para>Do not use global variables in named subroutines. This is bad practise anyway, but with ePN the
+ compiler will report an error "<global_var> will not stay shared ..". Values used by
+ subroutines should be passed in the argument list.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>If writing to a file (perhaps recording
<listitem><para>As in <xref linkend="runtime"> all plugins need
to monitor their runtime, specially if they are using network
- resources. Use of the <emphasis>alarm</emphasis> is recommended.
+ resources. Use of the <emphasis>alarm</emphasis> is recommended
+ noting that some Perl modules (eg LWP) manage timers, so that an alarm
+ set by a plugin using such a module is overwritten by the module.
+ (workarounds are cunning (TM) or using the module timer)
Plugins may import a default time out ($TIMEOUT) from utils.pm.
</para>
</listitem>
<para>The option -v or --verbose should be present in all plugins.
The user should be allowed to specify -v multiple times to increase
- the verbosity level, as described in <xref linkend="verbose_levels">.</para>
+ the verbosity level, as described in <xref linkend="verboselevels">.</para>
</section>
<section>
<section><title>Comments</title>
<para>You should use /* */ for comments and not // as some compilers
do not handle the latter form.</para>
- <para>There should not be any named credits in the source code - contributors
- should be added
- into the AUTHORS file instead. The only exception to this is if a routine
- has been copied from another source.</para>
+ <para>If you have copied a routine from another source, make sure the licence
+ from your source allows this. Add a comment referencing the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
+ file, where you can put more detail about the source.</para>
+ <para>For contributed code, do not add any named credits in the source code
+ - contributors should be added into the THANKS.in file instead.
+ </para>
</section>
<section><title>CVS comments</title>
</para>
<para>If the change is due to a contribution, please quote the contributor's name
and, if applicable, add the SourceForge Tracker number. Don't forget to
-update the AUTHORS file.</para>
+update the THANKS.in file.</para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section><title>Translations for developers</title>
+ <para>To make the job easier for translators please follow these guidelines:</para>
+ <orderedlist>
+ <listitem><para>
+ before creating new strings, check the po/de.po file to see if a similar string
+ already exists
+ </para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>
+ for help texts, break into individual options so that these can be reused
+ between plugins
+ </para></listitem>
+ </orderedlist>
+ </section>
+
+ <section><title>Translations for translators</title>
+ <para>To create an up to date list of translatable strings, run: tools/gen_locale.sh</para>
</section>
+
</section>
<section id="SubmittingChanges"><title>Submission of new plugins and patches</title>
Credit will always be given for any patches through a THANKS file in the distribution.</para>
</section>
- <section id="New_plugins"><title>New plugins</title>
- <para>If you would like others to use your plugins and have it included in
- the standard distribution, please include patches for the relevant
- configuration files, in particular "configure.in". Otherwise submitted
- plugins will be included in the contrib directory.</para>
-
- <para>Plugins in the contrib directory are going to be migrated to the
- standard plugins/plugin-scripts directory as time permits and per user
- requests. The minimum requirements are:</para>
+ <section id="Newplugins"><title>New plugins</title>
+
+ <para>If you would like others to use your plugins, please add it to
+ the official 3rd party plugin repository,
+ <ulink url="http://www.nagiosexchange.org">NagiosExchange</ulink>.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>We are not accepting requests for inclusion of plugins into
+ our distribution at the moment, but when we do, these are the minimum
+ requirements:
+ </para>
<orderedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Include copyright and license information in all files</para>
+ </listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The standard command options are supported (--help, --version,
--timeout, --warning, --critical)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>It should also follow code format guidelines, and use functions from
-utils (perl or c or sh) rather than cooking it's own</para>
+utils (perl or c or sh) rather than using its own</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Includes patches to configure.in if required (via the EXTRAS list if
+ it will only work on some platforms)</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>If possible, please submit a test harness. Documentation on sample
+ tests coming soon</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
- <para>New plugins should be submitted via
- <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=29880&atid=541465">SourceForge's
- tracker system for Nagiosplug new plugins</ulink>
- and be announced to the nagiosplug-devel mailing list.</para>
-
- <para>For new plugins, provide a diff to add to the EXTRAS list (configure.in)
- unless you are fairly sure that the plugin will work for all platforms with
- no non-standard software added.</para>
-
- <para>If possible please submit a test harness. Documentation on sample
- tests coming soon.</para>
</section>
</section>
-
</article>
</book>