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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>2009</pubdate>
15 <title>Nagios plug-in development guidelines</title>
17 <revhistory>
18 <revision>
19 <revnumber>1796</revnumber>
20 <date>2007-09-24 14:51:07 -0400 (Mon, 24 Sep 2007)</date>
21 </revision>
22 </revhistory>
24 <copyright>
25 <year>2000 - 2009</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) 2000-2009
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 are very basic, developing from the Git repository requires additional software to be
54 installed. These are the minimum levels of software required:
56 <literallayout>
57 GNU make 3.79
58 GNU automake 1.9.2
59 GNU autoconf 2.59
60 GNU m4 1.4.2
61 GNU libtool 1.5
62 </literallayout>
64 To compile from Git, after you have cloned the repository, run:
65 <literallayout>
66 tools/setup
67 ./configure
68 make
69 make install
70 </literallayout>
71 </para>
72 </section>
74 <section id="PlugOutput"><title>Plugin Output for Nagios</title>
76 <para>You should always print something to STDOUT that tells if the
77 service is working or why it is failing. Try to keep the output short -
78 probably less that 80 characters. Remember that you ideally would like
79 the entire output to appear in a pager message, which will get chopped
80 off after a certain length.</para>
82 <para>As Nagios does not capture stderr output, you should only output to
83 STDOUT and not print to STDERR.</para>
85 <section><title>Print only one line of text</title>
86 <para>Nagios will only grab the first line of text from STDOUT
87 when it notifies contacts about potential problems. If you print
88 multiple lines, you're out of luck (though this will be a feature of
89 Nagios 3). Remember, keep your output short and to the point.</para>
91 <para>Output should be in the format:</para>
92 <literallayout>
93 SERVICE STATUS: Information text
94 </literallayout>
95 <para>However, note that this is not a requirement of the API, so you cannot depend on this
96 being an accurate reflection of the status of the service - the status should always
97 be determined by the return code.</para>
98 </section>
100 <section><title>Verbose output</title>
101 <para>Use the -v flag for verbose output. You should allow multiple
102 -v options for additional verbosity, up to a maximum of 3. The standard
103 type of output should be:</para>
105 <table id="verboselevels"><title>Verbose output levels</title>
106 <tgroup cols="2">
107 <thead>
108 <row>
109 <entry><para>Verbosity level</para></entry>
110 <entry><para>Type of output</para></entry>
111 </row>
112 </thead>
113 <tbody>
114 <row>
115 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
116 <entry><para>Single line, minimal output. Summary</para></entry>
117 </row>
118 <row>
119 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
120 <entry><para>Single line, additional information (eg list processes that fail)</para></entry>
121 </row>
122 <row>
123 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
124 <entry><para>Multi line, configuration debug output (eg ps command used)</para></entry>
125 </row>
126 <row>
127 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
128 <entry><para>Lots of detail for plugin problem diagnosis</para></entry>
129 </row>
130 </tbody>
131 </tgroup>
132 </table>
133 </section>
135 <section><title>Screen Output</title>
136 <para>The plug-in should print the diagnostic and just the
137 usage part of the help message. A well written plugin would
138 then have --help as a way to get the verbose help.</para>
140 <para>Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
141 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
142 </section>
144 <section><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
145 <para>The return codes below are based on the POSIX spec of returning
146 a positive value. Netsaint prior to v0.0.7 supported non-POSIX
147 compliant return code of "-1" for unknown. Nagios supports POSIX return
148 codes by default.</para>
150 <para>Note: Some plugins will on occasion print on STDOUT that an error
151 occurred and error code is 138 or 255 or some such number. These
152 are usually caused by plugins using system commands and having not
153 enough checks to catch unexpected output. Developers should include a
154 default catch-all for system command output that returns an UNKNOWN
155 return code.</para>
157 <table id="ReturnCodes"><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
158 <tgroup cols="3">
159 <thead>
160 <row>
161 <entry><para>Numeric Value</para></entry>
162 <entry><para>Service Status</para></entry>
163 <entry><para>Status Description</para></entry>
164 </row>
165 </thead>
166 <tbody>
167 <row>
168 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
169 <entry valign="middle"><para>OK</para></entry>
170 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service and it
171 appeared to be functioning properly</para></entry>
172 </row>
173 <row>
174 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
175 <entry valign="middle"><para>Warning</para></entry>
176 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service, but it
177 appeared to be above some "warning" threshold or did not appear
178 to be working properly</para></entry>
179 </row>
180 <row>
181 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
182 <entry valign="middle"><para>Critical</para></entry>
183 <entry><para>The plugin detected that either the service was not
184 running or it was above some "critical" threshold</para></entry>
185 </row>
186 <row>
187 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
188 <entry valign="middle"><para>Unknown</para></entry>
189 <entry><para>Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the
190 plugin or low-level failures internal to the plugin (such as unable to fork,
191 or open a tcp socket) that prevent it from performing the specified
192 operation. Higher-level errors (such as name resolution errors,
193 socket timeouts, etc) are outside of the control of plugins and should
194 generally NOT be reported as UNKNOWN states.
195 </para></entry>
196 </row>
197 </tbody>
198 </tgroup>
199 </table>
202 </section>
204 <section id="thresholdformat"><title>Threshold and ranges</title>
205 <para>A range is defined as a start and end point (inclusive) on a numeric scale (possibly
206 negative or positive infinity).
207 </para>
208 <para>A threshold is a range with an alert level (either warning or critical). Use the
209 set_thresholds(thresholds *, char *, char *) function to set the thresholds.
210 </para>
211 <para>The theory is that the plugin will do some sort of check which returns
212 back a numerical value, or metric, which is then compared to the warning and
213 critical thresholds. Use the get_status(double, thresholds *) function to
214 compare the value against the thresholds.</para>
215 <para>This is the generalised format for ranges:</para>
217 <literallayout>
218 [@]start:end
219 </literallayout>
221 <para>Notes:</para>
222 <orderedlist>
223 <listitem><para>start ≤ end</para>
224 </listitem>
225 <listitem><para>start and ":" is not required if start=0</para>
226 </listitem>
227 <listitem><para>if range is of format "start:" and end is not specified,
228 assume end is infinity</para>
229 </listitem>
230 <listitem><para>to specify negative infinity, use "~"</para>
231 </listitem>
232 <listitem><para>alert is raised if metric is outside start and end range
233 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
234 </listitem>
235 <listitem><para>if range starts with "@", then alert if inside this range
236 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
237 </listitem>
238 </orderedlist>
240 <para>Note: Not all plugins are coded to expect ranges in this format yet.
241 There will be some work in providing multiple metrics.</para>
243 <table id="ExampleRanges"><title>Example ranges</title>
244 <tgroup cols="2">
245 <thead>
246 <row>
247 <entry><para>Range definition</para></entry>
248 <entry><para>Generate an alert if x...</para></entry>
249 </row>
250 </thead>
251 <tbody>
252 <row>
253 <entry>10</entry>
254 <entry>< 0 or > 10, (outside the range of {0 .. 10})</entry>
255 </row>
256 <row>
257 <entry>10:</entry>
258 <entry>< 10, (outside {10 .. ∞})</entry>
259 </row>
260 <row>
261 <entry>~:10</entry>
262 <entry>> 10, (outside the range of {-∞ .. 10})</entry>
263 </row>
264 <row>
265 <entry>10:20</entry>
266 <entry>< 10 or > 20, (outside the range of {10 .. 20})</entry>
267 </row>
268 <row>
269 <entry>@10:20</entry>
270 <entry>≥ 10 and ≤ 20, (inside the range of {10 .. 20})</entry>
271 </row>
272 <row>
273 <entry>10</entry>
274 <entry>< 0 or > 10, (outside the range of {0 .. 10})</entry>
275 </row>
276 </tbody>
277 </tgroup>
278 </table>
279 <table id="CommandLineExamples"><title>Command line examples</title>
280 <tgroup cols="2">
281 <thead>
282 <row>
283 <entry><para>Command line</para></entry>
284 <entry><para>Meaning</para></entry>
285 </row>
286 </thead>
287 <tbody>
288 <row>
289 <entry>check_stuff -w10 -c20</entry>
290 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is over 20, else warn if over 10 (will be critical if "stuff" is less than 0)</entry>
291 </row>
292 <row>
293 <entry>check_stuff -w~:10 -c~:20</entry>
294 <entry>Same as above. Negative "stuff" is OK</entry>
295 </row>
296 <row>
297 <entry>check_stuff -w10: -c20</entry>
298 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is over 20, else warn if "stuff" is below 10 (will be critical if "stuff" is less than 0)</entry>
299 </row>
300 <row>
301 <entry>check_stuff -c1:</entry>
302 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is less than 1</entry>
303 </row>
304 <row>
305 <entry>check_stuff -w~:0 -c10</entry>
306 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is above 10; Warn if "stuff" is above zero</entry>
307 </row>
308 <row>
309 <entry>check_stuff -c5:6</entry>
310 <entry>The only noncritical range is 5:6</entry>
311 </row>
312 <row>
313 <entry>check_stuff -c10:20</entry>
314 <entry>Critical if "stuff" is less than 10 or over 20</entry>
315 </row>
316 </tbody>
317 </tgroup>
318 </table>
319 </section>
321 <section><title>Performance data</title>
322 <para>Performance data is defined by Nagios as "everything after the | of the plugin output" -
323 please refer to Nagios documentation for information on capturing this data to logfiles.
324 However, it is the responsibility of the plugin writer to ensure the
325 performance data is in a "Nagios plugins" format.
326 This is the expected format:</para>
328 <literallayout>
329 'label'=value[UOM];[warn];[crit];[min];[max]
330 </literallayout>
332 <para>Notes:</para>
333 <orderedlist>
334 <listitem><para>space separated list of label/value pairs</para>
335 </listitem>
336 <listitem><para>label can contain any characters except the equals sign or single quote (')</para>
337 </listitem>
338 <listitem><para>the single quotes for the label are optional. Required if
339 spaces are in the label</para>
340 </listitem>
341 <listitem><para>label length is arbitrary, but ideally the first 19 characters
342 are unique (due to a limitation in RRD). Be aware of a limitation in the
343 amount of data that NRPE returns to Nagios</para>
344 </listitem>
345 <listitem><para>to specify a quote character, use two single quotes</para>
346 </listitem>
347 <listitem><para>warn, crit, min or max may be null (for example, if the threshold is
348 not defined or min and max do not apply). Trailing unfilled semicolons can be
349 dropped</para>
350 </listitem>
351 <listitem><para>min and max are not required if UOM=%</para>
352 </listitem>
353 <listitem><para>value, min and max in class [-0-9.]. Must all be the
354 same UOM</para>
355 </listitem>
356 <listitem><para>warn and crit are in the range format (see
357 <xref linkend="thresholdformat">). Must be the same UOM</para>
358 </listitem>
359 <listitem><para>UOM (unit of measurement) is one of:</para>
360 <orderedlist>
361 <listitem><para>no unit specified - assume a number (int or float)
362 of things (eg, users, processes, load averages)</para>
363 </listitem>
364 <listitem><para>s - seconds (also us, ms)</para></listitem>
365 <listitem><para>% - percentage</para></listitem>
366 <listitem><para>B - bytes (also KB, MB, TB)</para></listitem>
367 <listitem><para>c - a continous counter (such as bytes
368 transmitted on an interface)</para></listitem>
369 </orderedlist>
370 </listitem>
371 </orderedlist>
373 <para>It is up to third party programs to convert the Nagios plugins
374 performance data into graphs.</para>
375 </section>
377 <section><title>Translations</title>
378 <para>If possible, use translation tools for all output to respect the user's language
379 settings. See <xref linkend="translationsdevelopers"> for guidelines
380 for the core plugins.
381 </para>
382 </section>
383 </section>
385 <section id="SysCmdAuxFiles"><title>System Commands and Auxiliary Files</title>
387 <section><title>Don't execute system commands without specifying their
388 full path</title>
389 <para>Don't use exec(), popen(), etc. to execute external
390 commands without explicity using the full path of the external
391 program.</para>
393 <para>Doing otherwise makes the plugin vulnerable to hijacking
394 by a trojan horse earlier in the search path. See the main
395 plugin distribution for examples on how this is done.</para>
396 </section>
398 <section><title>Use spopen() if external commands must be executed</title>
400 <para>If you have to execute external commands from within your
401 plugin and you're writing it in C, use the spopen() function
402 that Karl DeBisschop has written.</para>
404 <para>The code for spopen() and spclose() is included with the
405 core plugin distribution.</para>
406 </section>
408 <section><title>Don't make temp files unless absolutely required</title>
410 <para>If temp files are needed, make sure that the plugin will
411 fail cleanly if the file can't be written (e.g., too few file
412 handles, out of disk space, incorrect permissions, etc.) and
413 delete the temp file when processing is complete.</para>
414 </section>
416 <section><title>Don't be tricked into following symlinks</title>
418 <para>If your plugin opens any files, take steps to ensure that
419 you are not following a symlink to another location on the
420 system.</para>
421 </section>
423 <section><title>Validate all input</title>
425 <para>use routines in utils.c or utils.pm and write more as needed</para>
426 </section>
428 </section>
433 <section id="PerlPlugin"><title>Perl Plugins</title>
435 <para>Perl plugins are coded a little more defensively than other
436 plugins because of embedded Perl. When configured as such, embedded
437 Perl Nagios (ePN) requires stricter use of the some of Perl's features.
438 This section outlines some of the steps needed to use ePN
439 effectively.</para>
441 <orderedlist>
443 <listitem><para> Do not use BEGIN and END blocks since they will be called
444 only once (when Nagios starts and shuts down) with Embedded Perl (ePN). In
445 particular, do not use BEGIN blocks to initialize variables.</para>
446 </listitem>
448 <listitem><para>To use utils.pm, you need to provide a full path to the
449 module in order for it to work.</para>
451 <literallayout>
452 e.g.
453 use lib "/usr/local/nagios/libexec";
454 use utils qw(...);
455 </literallayout>
456 </listitem>
458 <listitem><para>Perl scripts should be called with "-w"</para>
459 </listitem>
461 <listitem><para>All Perl plugins must compile cleanly under "use strict" - i.e. at
462 least explicitly package names as in "$main::x" or predeclare every
463 variable. </para>
466 <para>Explicitly initialize each variable in use. Otherwise with
467 caching enabled, the plugin will not be recompiled each time, and
468 therefore Perl will not reinitialize all the variables. All old
469 variable values will still be in effect.</para>
470 </listitem>
472 <listitem><para>Do not use >DATA< handles (these simply do not compile under ePN).</para>
473 </listitem>
475 <listitem><para>Do not use global variables in named subroutines. This is bad practise anyway, but with ePN the
476 compiler will report an error "<global_var> will not stay shared ..". Values used by
477 subroutines should be passed in the argument list.</para>
478 </listitem>
480 <listitem><para>If writing to a file (perhaps recording
481 performance data) explicitly close close it. The plugin never
482 calls <emphasis role="strong">exit</emphasis>; that is caught by
483 p1.pl, so output streams are never closed.</para>
484 </listitem>
486 <listitem><para>As in <xref linkend="runtime"> all plugins need
487 to monitor their runtime, specially if they are using network
488 resources. Use of the <emphasis>alarm</emphasis> is recommended
489 noting that some Perl modules (eg LWP) manage timers, so that an alarm
490 set by a plugin using such a module is overwritten by the module.
491 (workarounds are cunning (TM) or using the module timer)
492 Plugins may import a default time out ($TIMEOUT) from utils.pm.
493 </para>
494 </listitem>
496 <listitem><para>Perl plugins should import %ERRORS from utils.pm
497 and then "exit $ERRORS{'OK'}" rather than "exit 0"
498 </para>
499 </listitem>
501 </orderedlist>
503 </section>
505 <section id="runtime"><title>Runtime Timeouts</title>
507 <para>Plugins have a very limited runtime - typically 10 sec.
508 As a result, it is very important for plugins to maintain internal
509 code to exit if runtime exceeds a threshold. </para>
511 <para>All plugins should timeout gracefully, not just networking
512 plugins. For instance, df may lock if you have automounted
513 drives and your network fails - but on first glance, who'd think
514 df could lock up like that. Plus, it should just be more error
515 resistant to be able to time out rather than consume
516 resources.</para>
518 <section><title>Use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT</title>
520 <para>All network plugins should use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT to timeout</para>
522 </section>
525 <section><title>Add alarms to network plugins</title>
527 <para>If you write a plugin which communicates with another
528 networked host, you should make sure to set an alarm() in your
529 code that prevents the plugin from hanging due to abnormal
530 socket closures, etc. Nagios takes steps to protect itself
531 against unruly plugins that timeout, but any plugins you create
532 should be well behaved on their own.</para>
534 </section>
538 </section>
540 <section id="PlugOptions"><title>Plugin Options</title>
542 <para>A well written plugin should have --help as a way to get
543 verbose help. Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
544 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
546 <section><title>Option Processing</title>
548 <para>For plugins written in C, we recommend the C standard
549 getopt library for short options. Getopt_long is always available.
550 </para>
552 <para>For plugins written in Perl, we recommend Getopt::Long module.</para>
554 <para>Positional arguments are strongly discouraged.</para>
556 <para>There are a few reserved options that should not be used
557 for other purposes:</para>
559 <literallayout>
560 -V version (--version)
561 -h help (--help)
562 -t timeout (--timeout)
563 -w warning threshold (--warning)
564 -c critical threshold (--critical)
565 -H hostname (--hostname)
566 -v verbose (--verbose)
567 </literallayout>
569 <para>In addition to the reserved options above, some other standard options are:</para>
571 <literallayout>
572 -C SNMP community (--community)
573 -a authentication password (--authentication)
574 -l login name (--logname)
575 -p port or password (--port or --passwd/--password)monitors operational
576 -u url or username (--url or --username)
577 </literallayout>
579 <para>Look at check_pgsql and check_procs to see how I currently
580 think this can work. Standard options are:</para>
583 <para>The option -V or --version should be present in all
584 plugins. For C plugins it should result in a call to print_revision, a
585 function in utils.c which takes two character arguments, the
586 command name and the plugin revision.</para>
588 <para>The -? option, or any other unparsable set of options,
589 should print out a short usage statement. Character width should
590 be 80 and less and no more that 23 lines should be printed (it
591 should display cleanly on a dumb terminal in a server
592 room).</para>
594 <para>The option -h or --help should be present in all plugins.
595 In C plugins, it should result in a call to print_help (or
596 equivalent). The function print_help should call print_revision,
597 then print_usage, then should provide detailed
598 help. Help text should fit on an 80-character width display, but
599 may run as many lines as needed.</para>
601 <para>The option -v or --verbose should be present in all plugins.
602 The user should be allowed to specify -v multiple times to increase
603 the verbosity level, as described in <xref linkend="verboselevels">.</para>
604 </section>
606 <section>
607 <title>Plugins with more than one type of threshold, or with
608 threshold ranges</title>
610 <para>Old style was to do things like -ct for critical time and
611 -cv for critical value. That goes out the window with POSIX
612 getopt. The allowable alternatives are:</para>
614 <orderedlist>
615 <listitem>
616 <para>long options like -critical-time (or -ct and -cv, I
617 suppose).</para>
618 </listitem>
620 <listitem>
621 <para>repeated options like `check_load -w 10 -w 6 -w 4 -c
622 16 -c 10 -c 10`</para>
623 </listitem>
625 <listitem>
626 <para>for brevity, the above can be expressed as `check_load
627 -w 10,6,4 -c 16,10,10`</para>
628 </listitem>
630 <listitem>
631 <para>ranges are expressed with colons as in `check_procs -C
632 httpd -w 1:20 -c 1:30` which will warn above 20 instances,
633 and critical at 0 and above 30</para>
634 </listitem>
636 <listitem>
637 <para>lists are expressed with commas, so Jacob's check_nmap
638 uses constructs like '-p 1000,1010,1050:1060,2000'</para>
639 </listitem>
641 <listitem>
642 <para>If possible when writing lists, use tokens to make the
643 list easy to remember and non-order dependent - so
644 check_disk uses '-c 10000,10%' so that it is clear which is
645 the precentage and which is the KB values (note that due to
646 my own lack of foresight, that used to be '-c 10000:10%' but
647 such constructs should all be changed for consistency,
648 though providing reverse compatibility is fairly
649 easy).</para>
650 </listitem>
652 </orderedlist>
654 <para>As always, comments are welcome - making this consistent
655 without a host of long options was quite a hassle, and I would
656 suspect that there are flaws in this strategy.
657 </para>
658 </section>
659 </section>
661 <section id="Testcases"><title>Test cases</title>
662 <para>
663 Tests are the best way of knowing if the plugins work as expected. Please
664 create and update test cases where possible.
665 </para>
667 <para>
668 To run a test, from the top level directory, run "make test". This will run
669 all the current tests and report an overall success rate.
670 </para>
672 <para>
673 See the <ulink url="http://tinderbox.opsera.com">Nagios Plugins Tinderbox server</ulink>
674 for the daily test results.
675 </para>
677 <section><title>Test cases for plugins</title>
678 <para>These use perl's Test::More. To do a one time test, run "cd plugins && perl t/check_disk.t".
679 </para>
681 <para>There will somtimes be failures seen in this output which are known failures that
682 need to be fixed. As long as the return code is 0, it will be reported as "test pass".
683 (If you have a fix so that the specific test passes, that will be gratefully received!)
684 </para>
686 <para>
687 If you want a summary test, run: "cd plugins && prove t/check_disk.t".
688 This runs the test in a summary format.
689 </para>
691 <para>
692 For a good and amusing tutorial on using Test::More, see this
693 <ulink url="http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Test-Simple-0.62/lib/Test/Tutorial.pod">
694 link</ulink>
695 </para>
697 </section>
699 <section><title>Testing the C library functions</title>
700 <para>
701 We use <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/LibTap">the libtap library</ulink>, which gives
702 perl's TAP
703 (Test Anything Protocol) output. This is used by the FreeBSD team for their regression testing.
704 </para>
706 <para>
707 To run tests using the libtap library, download the latest tar ball and extract.
708 There is a problem with tap-1.01 where
709 <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/25">pthread support doesn't appear to work</ulink>
710 properly on non-FreeBSD systems. Install with 'CPPFLAGS="-UHAVE_LIBPTHREAD" ./configure && make && make check && make install'.
711 </para>
713 <para>
714 When you run Nagios Plugins' configure, it will look for the tap library and will automatically
715 setup the tests. Run "make test" to run all the tests.
716 </para>
717 </section>
719 </section>
720 <section id="CodingGuidelines"><title>Coding guidelines</title>
721 <para>See <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html">GNU
722 Coding standards</ulink> for general guidelines.</para>
723 <section><title>C coding</title>
725 <para>Variables should be declared at the beginning of code blocks and
726 not inline because of portability with older compilers.</para>
728 <para>You should use /* */ for comments and not // as some compilers
729 do not handle the latter form.</para>
731 <para>You should also avoid using the type "bool" and its values
732 "true" and "false". Instead use the "int" type and the plugins' own
733 "TRUE"/"FALSE" values to keep the code uniformly.</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>Commit Messages</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 commits 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 Git "master" branch.</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://exchange.nagios.org">Nagios Exchange</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://exchange.nagios.org">Nagios Exchange</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>