X-Git-Url: https://git.tokkee.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=sidebyside;f=doc%2Fdeveloper-guidelines.sgml;h=ed7e422692f7c821063be0e372c3ef42b8583db7;hb=12c17fe8a25ada493a87ed3d5a5885e3414052ac;hp=f950b8fe3f3193e9e5685412c369567dc580eaea;hpb=2f6a959999bfe377d9752f64a7543413f948adb6;p=nagiosplug.git
diff --git a/doc/developer-guidelines.sgml b/doc/developer-guidelines.sgml
index f950b8f..ed7e422 100644
--- a/doc/developer-guidelines.sgml
+++ b/doc/developer-guidelines.sgml
@@ -11,18 +11,18 @@
- 2005
+ 2006
Nagios plug-in development guidelines
- $Revision$
- $Date$
+ 1796
+ 2007-09-24 14:51:07 -0400 (Mon, 24 Sep 2007)
- 2000 - 2005
+ 2000 - 2006
Nagios Plugins Development Team
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
the plug-in developers and encourage the standarization of the
different kind of plug-ins: C, shell, perl, python, etc.
- Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2005
+ Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2006
(Nagios Plugins Team)
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim
@@ -55,9 +55,10 @@
gnu make 3.79
- automake 1.8
- autoconf 2.58
- gettext 0.11.5
+ automake 1.9.2
+ autoconf 2.59
+ gnu m4 1.4.2
+ gnu libtool 1.5
To compile from CVS, after you have checked out the code, run:
@@ -68,6 +69,14 @@
make install
+
+ Note: gettext is no longer a developer platform requirement. A lot of the files in lib/ and m4/
+ are synced with the coreutils project and we use the same levels of gettext that they
+ distribute.
+
+ Note: gnu libtool, which must be at version 1.5.22 or above, has files installed into CVS, so is not
+ a development platform requirement.
+
Plugin Output for Nagios
@@ -78,15 +87,18 @@
the entire output to appear in a pager message, which will get chopped
off after a certain length.
+ As Nagios does not capture stderr output, you should only output to
+ STDOUT and not print to STDERR.
+
Print only one line of text
Nagios will only grab the first line of text from STDOUT
when it notifies contacts about potential problems. If you print
- multiple lines, you're out of luck. Remember, keep it short and
- to the point.
+ multiple lines, you're out of luck (though this will be a feature of
+ Nagios 3). Remember, keep your output short and to the point.
Output should be in the format:
- METRIC STATUS: Information text
+ SERVICE STATUS: Information text
However, note that this is not a requirement of the API, so you cannot depend on this
being an accurate reflection of the status of the service - the status should always
@@ -130,20 +142,13 @@
Screen Output
The plug-in should print the diagnostic and just the
- synopsis part of the help message. A well written plugin would
+ usage part of the help message. A well written plugin would
then have --help as a way to get the verbose help.
+
Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)
- Return the proper status code
- See below
- for the numeric values of status codes and their
- description. Remember to return an UNKNOWN state if bogus or
- invalid command line arguments are supplied or it you are unable
- to check the service.
-
-
Plugin Return Codes
The return codes below are based on the POSIX spec of returning
a positive value. Netsaint prior to v0.0.7 supported non-POSIX
@@ -190,8 +195,12 @@
3
Unknown
Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the
- plugin or the plugin was unable to check the status of the given
- hosts/service
+ plugin or low-level failures internal to the plugin (such as unable to fork,
+ or open a tcp socket) that prevent it from performing the specified
+ operation. Higher-level errors (such as name resolution errors,
+ socket timeouts, etc) are outside of the control of plugins and should
+ generally NOT be reported as UNKNOWN states.
+
@@ -200,12 +209,18 @@
-
Performance data
@@ -293,15 +383,10 @@
Translations
- If possible, use translation tools for all output. Currently, most of the core C plugins
- use gettext for translation. General guidelines are:
-
-
- short help is not translated
- long help has options in English language, but text translated
- "Copyright" kept in English
- copyright holder names kept in original text
-
+ If possible, use translation tools for all output to respect the user's language
+ settings. See for guidelines
+ for the core plugins.
+
@@ -581,12 +666,82 @@
+Test cases
+
+Tests are the best way of knowing if the plugins work as expected. Please
+create and update test cases where possible.
+
+
+
+To run a test, from the top level directory, run "make test". This will run
+all the current tests and report an overall success rate.
+
+
+
+See the Nagios Plugins Tinderbox server
+for the daily test results.
+
+
+Test cases for plugins
+These use perl's Test::More. To do a one time test, run "cd plugins && perl t/check_disk.t".
+
+
+There will somtimes be failures seen in this output which are known failures that
+need to be fixed. As long as the return code is 0, it will be reported as "test pass".
+(If you have a fix so that the specific test passes, that will be gratefully received!)
+
+
+
+If you want a summary test, run: "cd plugins && prove t/check_disk.t".
+This runs the test in a summary format.
+
+
+
+For a good and amusing tutorial on using Test::More, see this
+
+link
+
+
+
+
+Testing the C library functions
+
+We use the libtap library, which gives
+perl's TAP
+(Test Anything Protocol) output. This is used by the FreeBSD team for their regression testing.
+
+
+
+To run tests using the libtap library, download the latest tar ball and extract.
+There is a problem with tap-1.01 where
+pthread support doesn't appear to work
+properly on non-FreeBSD systems. Install with 'CPPFLAGS="-UHAVE_LIBPTHREAD" ./configure && make && make check && make install'.
+
+
+
+When you run Nagios Plugins' configure, it will look for the tap library and will automatically
+setup the tests. Run "make test" to run all the tests.
+
+
+
+
Coding guidelines
See GNU
Coding standards for general guidelines.
- Comments
+ C coding
+
+ Variables should be declared at the beginning of code blocks and
+ not inline because of portability with older compilers.
+
You should use /* */ for comments and not // as some compilers
do not handle the latter form.
+
+ You should also avoid using the type "bool" and its values
+ "true" and "false". Instead use the "int" type and the plugins' own
+ "TRUE"/"FALSE" values to keep the code uniformly.
+
+
+ Crediting sources
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.
@@ -596,36 +751,33 @@
CVS comments
- When adding CVS comments at commit time, you can use the following prefixes:
-
- - comment
-
- for a comment that can be removed from the Changelog
-
-
- * comment
-
- for an important amendment to be included into a features list
-
-
-
-
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 THANKS.in file.
+ If you have a change that is useful for noting in the next release, please
+ update the NEWS file.
+ All CVS commit comments will be written to a ChangeLog at release time.
+
- Translations for developers
- To make the job easier for translators please follow these guidelines:
+ Translations for developers
+ To make the job easier for translators, please follow these guidelines:
- before creating new strings, check the po/de.po file to see if a similar string
+ Before creating new strings, check the po/nagios-plugins.pot file to
+ see if a similar string
already exists
- for help texts, break into individual options so that these can be reused
+ For help texts, break into individual options so that these can be reused
between plugins
+ Try to avoid linefeeds unless you are working on a block of text
+ Short help is not translated
+ Long help has options in English language, but text translated
+ "Copyright" kept in English
+ Copyright holder names kept in original text
+ Debugging output does not need to be translated
@@ -655,8 +807,22 @@ update the THANKS.in file.
Credit will always be given for any patches through a THANKS file in the distribution.
- New plugins
+ Contributed plugins
+ Plugins that have been contributed to the project and
+ distributed with the Nagios Plugin files are held in the contrib/ directory and are not installed
+ by default. These plugins are not officially supported by the team.
+ The current policy is that these plugins should be owned and maintained by the original
+ contributor, preferably hosted on NagiosExchange.
+
+ If patches or bugs are raised to an contributed plugin, we will start communications with the
+ original contributor, but seek to remove the plugin from our distribution.
+
+ The aim is to distribute only code that the Nagios Plugin team are responsible for.
+
+
+
+ New plugins
If you would like others to use your plugins, please add it to
the official 3rd party plugin repository,
NagiosExchange.
@@ -669,7 +835,8 @@ update the THANKS.in file.
- Include copyright and license information in all files
+ Include copyright and license information in all files. Copyright must be solely
+ granted to the Nagios Plugin Development Team
The standard command options are supported (--help, --version,