Style Tips

Style Tips

Having your editor take care of formatting for you can save headaches during the acceptance process.

VIM

Adding the following settings to your .vimrc will make conforming to the HACKING and msftidy.rb guidelines considerably easier.

set shiftwidth=4 tabstop=4 softtabstop=4
" textwidth affects `gq` which is handy for formatting comments
set textwidth=78
" Metasploit generally requires hard tabs instead of spaces
set noexpandtab
" Highlight spaces at EOL and mixed tabs and spaces.
hi BogusWhitespace ctermbg=darkgreen guibg=darkgreen
" Note that this regex matches spaces at the beggining of lines which can
" get annoying when editing other kinds of files that use spaces for tabs.
" If you want this match to apply only to ruby files, see the augroup
" implementation below.
match BogusWhitespace /\s\+$\|^\t\+ \+\|^ \+\t*/

If you'd rather these settings only apply to ruby files, you can use an autogroup and autocommands.

if !exists("au_loaded")
    let au_loaded = 1
    augroup rb
        au FileType ruby set shiftwidth=4 tabstop=4 softtabstop=4 textwidth=78
        au FileType ruby set noexpandtab
        au FileType ruby hi BogusWhitespace ctermbg=darkgreen guibg=darkgreen
        au FileType ruby match BogusWhitespace /\s\+$\|^\t\+ \+\|^ \+\t*/
    augroup END
endif

You can also use :set list to see all whitespace as distinct characters to make it easier to see errant whitespace.