This document describes the guidelines contributors should follow when making changes to Predator.
These guidelines describe general rules for Predator that you should be aware of before making any changes.
- Predator and all it's dependencies should be completely free and open source.
- Changes that involve a proprietary dependency or service will be rejected.
- Predator should never connect to the internet unless explicitly asked to be the user.
- This especially includes analytics. Predator should not "phone home" with analytics or other information.
- This also includes automatic crowd-sourcing. Predator is designed to be a stand-alone, self contained, primarily offline tool.
- Predator is designed for individual hobbyists, not law enforcement or commercial applications. Keep this in mind when considering the audience your changes will be used by.
- License plate reading and analysis is a delicate subject when it comes to privacy, freedom, and ethics. Use discretion when you consider what features and functionality you want to add.
- Considering Predator is frequently used in vehicles, take care to avoid adding features that require the user to look away from the road during normal operation.
These guidelines describe how changes to Predator's code should be made.
- Use proper grammar and punctuation in your code and comments. Try to use full sentences, when appropriate.
- Make extensive use of comments. If possible, practically every line of code should have a comment describing what it does, what it's there, and other things that other contributors may need to know.
- Variable names should be all lowercase with underscores separating words.
- Example:
my_variable_name
- Example:
- Make use of line-breaks to visually separate sections of code.
- For example, a function definition should have 3 or 4 line-breaks before and after it to visually separate it from the surrounding code.
- Place function definitions in
utils.py, then import them intomain.pywith the rest of the utility function loading statements.