Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

doc: add note regarding file structure in src/README.md #35000

Closed
wants to merge 1 commit into from
Closed
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Diff view
Diff view
24 changes: 24 additions & 0 deletions src/README.md
Expand Up @@ -38,6 +38,30 @@ the [event loop][] and other operation system abstractions to Node.js.

There is a [reference documentation for the libuv API][].

## File structure

The Node.js C++ files follow this structure:

The `.h` header files contain declarations, and sometimes definitions that don’t
require including other headers (e.g. getters, setters, etc.). They should only
include other `.h` header files and nothing else.

The `-inl.h` header files contain definitions of inline functions from the
corresponding `.h` header file (e.g. functions marked `inline` in the
declaration or `template` functions). They always include the corresponding
`.h` header file, and can include other `.h` and `-inl.h` header files as
needed. It is not mandatory to split out the definitions from the `.h` file
into an `-inl.h` file, but it becomes necessary when there are multiple
definitions and contents of other `-inl.h` files start being used. Therefore, it
is recommended to split a `-inl.h` file when inline functions become longer than
a few lines to keep the corresponding `.h` file readable and clean. All visible
definitions from the `-inl.h` file should be declared in the corresponding `.h`
header file.

The `.cc` files contain definitions of non-inline functions from the
corresponding `.h` header file. They always include the corresponding `.h`
header file, and can include other `.h` and `-inl.h` header files as needed.

## Helpful concepts

A number of concepts are involved in putting together Node.js on top of V8 and
Expand Down