Develop for Diosix

We welcome contributions to the Diosix project. To maintain a consistent standard across both code and documentation, contributors must follow the guidelines and coding standards described below.

Memory ownership and allocation

The hypervisor manages memory explicitly to prevent leaks and runtime failures. Function callers are responsible for tracking and freeing heap allocations returned by functions that require an allocator. You must use the provided allocator for resource deallocations and handle cleanups under failure states using Zig’s defer and errdefer mechanisms.

Unit testing

All new core logic must include unit tests. The test suite compiles and runs natively on the host development machine.

To run the test suite, use the build wrapper script:

./scripts/build.sh test

Ensure all tests pass before submitting changes for review.

Coding style and standards

Code contributions must follow standard Zig naming conventions, such as PascalCase for types and camelCase for functions. Format all Zig files using zig fmt before committing.

For technical documentation, follow the guidelines in the style guide, including wrapping prose at approximately 80 characters, using sentence-case headings, and spelling out abbreviations on first use.

Versioning and branching model

Diosix manages development and releases using a staging-to-release workflow.

Calendar Versioning

We use the Calendar Versioning (CalVer) standard in the YY.MINOR format. Even-numbered minor versions indicate stable, production-ready releases suitable for deployment. Odd-numbered minor versions indicate development builds representing active, ongoing changes.

Staging branches

The repository maintains two branches to coordinate changes. The devel branch serves as the staging area for ongoing feature additions and active development. The stable branch represents production-ready code, from which releases are created and the project website is built.

All development workflows target the devel branch; changes are only merged from devel into stable after completing testing and validation.