sort.h is based on the hard work and fun times of several people, and I hope
you'll join us!
Step 1 is always check out the code, play with it, and make whatever change you were planning to make. Maybe adding a new algorithm, improving the performance of something, or making something simpler?
Adding more documentation would also be wonderful!
To be compatible with as many C compilers as possible, we stick to the rather
old C89 standard.
In particular, some Microsoft compilers are very picky about this, and
we want that sort.h runs on all platforms.
sort.h is pure C and macros, and should compile without any other libraries.
We don't want to create a dependency problem.
We want to keep it that way, because dependencies are an awful problem in C.
sort.h is almost entirely self-contained (sort_common.h is only
ever included once, and has some common functions for sort.h).
It doesn't build libraries
We want to keep it that way, because building libraries, versioning them, and linking to them correctly are awful problems in C.
All functions should be static in sort.h and sort_common.h.
Combined with the fact that we don't build any libraries, this allows the compiler to make all sorts of optimizations it can never make otherwise, such as inlining functions, using fast arithmetic, and avoiding pointers.
The proper, C89 way to do inlining is to mark a function as __inline --
this is useful for comparisons and other small functions that are used often.
Run make, and it should build stresstest and run it, which
will make sure nothing is broken.
If you are writing new code, make sure that it is tested in
stresstest.c.
Run make format to ensure that the source files all conform to some
standard style guidelines for C.
(On OS X, you can use brew install astyle to install astyle.)
On your fork, push your branch up with your changes, and create a pull request.
Swenson should review the code shortly, and provide you feedback, or merge if it looks great.
If you have questions, problems, or just aren't even sure where to start, please reach out! Open an issue, or reach out on Twitter (https://twitter.com/chris_swenson) or email (chris@caswenson.com), and we'd be happy to help.
<3