Gnits Standards
Encyclopedia
The Gnits standards are a collection of standard
s and recommendations for programming, maintaining, and distributing software. They are published by a group of GNU project
maintainers who call themselves "Gnits", which is short for "GNU nit-pickers". As such, they represent advice, not Free Software Foundation
or GNU
policy, but parts of the Gnits' standards have seen widespread adoption among free software
programmers in general.
The Gnits standards are extensions to, refinements of, and annotations for the GNU standards. However, they are in no way normative in GNU; GNU maintainers are not required to follow them. Nevertheless, maintainers and programmers often find in Gnits standards good ideas on the way to follow GNU Standards themselves, as well as tentative, non-official explanations about why some GNU standards were decided the way they are. There are very few discrepancies between Gnits and GNU standards, and they are always well noted as such.
The standards address aspects of software architecture
, program behaviour, human–computer interaction
, C programming, documentation
, and software releases.
As of 2008, the Gnits standards carry a notice that they are moribund and no longer actively maintained, and points readers to the manuals of Gnulib
, Autoconf
, and Automake
, which are said to cover many of the same topics.
Standardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....
s and recommendations for programming, maintaining, and distributing software. They are published by a group of GNU project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
maintainers who call themselves "Gnits", which is short for "GNU nit-pickers". As such, they represent advice, not Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
or GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
policy, but parts of the Gnits' standards have seen widespread adoption among free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
programmers in general.
The Gnits standards are extensions to, refinements of, and annotations for the GNU standards. However, they are in no way normative in GNU; GNU maintainers are not required to follow them. Nevertheless, maintainers and programmers often find in Gnits standards good ideas on the way to follow GNU Standards themselves, as well as tentative, non-official explanations about why some GNU standards were decided the way they are. There are very few discrepancies between Gnits and GNU standards, and they are always well noted as such.
The standards address aspects of software architecture
Software architecture
The software architecture of a system is the set of structures needed to reason about the system, which comprise software elements, relations among them, and properties of both...
, program behaviour, human–computer interaction
Human–computer interaction
Human–computer Interaction is the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study...
, C programming, documentation
Software documentation
Software documentation or source code documentation is written text that accompanies computer software. It either explains how it operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in different roles....
, and software releases.
As of 2008, the Gnits standards carry a notice that they are moribund and no longer actively maintained, and points readers to the manuals of Gnulib
Gnulib
Gnulib, also called the GNU portability library, is a collection of software subroutines which are designed to be usable on many operating systems. The goal of the project is to make it easy for free software authors to make their software run on many operating systems...
, Autoconf
Autoconf
GNU Autoconf is a tool for producing configure scripts for building, installing and packaging software on computer systems where a Bourne shell is available....
, and Automake
Automake
GNU Automake is a programming tool that produces portable makefiles for use by the make program, used in compiling software. It is made by the Free Software Foundation as one of GNU programs, and is part of the GNU build system. The makefiles produced follow the GNU Coding Standards.It is written...
, which are said to cover many of the same topics.