Basics

Build

See compilation and dependencies.

Coordinate system

We are using the default opengl right handed coordinate system with x going right, y going upwards and z point towards you.

We are using column major matrices.

Unittests

If you are going to contribute, make sure that you are adding unittests, too. I won't make promises about not breaking anything if there aren't unittests that are telling me that I've broken something.

To add a unittest, each module (src/modules/XXX) has a tests/ subdirectory. The CMakeLists.txt in the module directory adds the source files from that folder.

set(TEST_SRCS
  [...]
)
gtest_suite_begin(tests-${LIB} TEMPLATE ${ROOT_DIR}/src/modules/core/tests/main.cpp.in)
gtest_suite_sources(tests-${LIB} ${TEST_SRCS})
gtest_suite_deps(tests-${LIB} ${LIB})
gtest_suite_end(tests-${LIB})

UI tests

The Dear ImGui Automation and Test Engine is also integrated into the code base. At the time of writing only VoxEdit has these type of tests. You can activate them via cmake option (USE_IMGUITESTENGINE).

Benchmarks

Similar to the unittests, there are benchmarks integrated into the code base. They are (like the unittests) close to the code they are benchmarking.

if (USE_BENCHMARKS)
    set(BENCHMARK_SRCS
        benchmarks/YourBenchmark.cpp
    )
    engine_add_executable(TARGET benchmarks-${LIB} SRCS ${BENCHMARK_SRCS} NOINSTALL)
    engine_target_link_libraries(TARGET benchmarks-${LIB} DEPENDENCIES benchmark-app ${LIB})
endif()

Coding style

Rule of thumb - stick to the existing coding style - you can also use the clang-format settings to format your code. In general you should not include any whitespace or formatting changes if they don't belong to your code changes.

If you do a formatting change, this should not be mixed with code changes - make a dedicated commit for the formatting.

Avoid using the STL were possible - see Orthodox C++.

Commit messages

Commit messages should match the usual git commit message guidelines. Keep the summary short - put an UPPERCASE prefix in front of it and try to explain why the change was made - not what you changed (because that is part of the commit diff already).

The prefix is usually the module name. E.g. if you are changing code in src/modules/voxelformat the prefix would be VOXELFORMAT. A commit message could look like this:

VOXELFORMAT: summary

detail message line 1
detail message line 2

Modules

Name	Description
app	Basic application classes
color	Color conversions and helpers
command	Bind c++ functionality to console commands
commonlua	Basic lua bindings and helper
core	String, collections and other foundation classes
http	Http download module
image	Image loading and writing
io	Stream and file handling
math	Based on glm
memento	The undo/redo states for a scene graph instance
metric	telegraf, influx and other metrics
network	Network util functions used for voxedit network mode
noise	Different noise implementations
palette	Palette formats and helper
render	General renderer implementations and helpers
scenegraph	Scene graph and scene graph node implementation
testcore	Visual test helpers
ui	DearImgui based ui code
util
video	Window and renderer module
voxel	The voxel engine code based on PolyVox
voxelcollection	Browse online and local voxel collections
voxelfont	TTF font to voxel
voxelformat	Several volume and mesh based file formats to load or generate voxels
voxelgenerator	LUA generator, space colonization, tree- and shape generators
voxelpathtracer	Path tracer
voxelrender	Voxel renderer
voxelui	Lua and file dialog panels
voxelutil	Pathfinding, raycasting, image and general util functions