# Coding standards

Guidelines for CherryPy Developers

CherryPy is an open source project. It means that all developers can contribute, but also, that everyone is responsible for the coding standards. To keep the source code in a consistent state, and to make sure that all tools work nicely, some guidelines must be adhered to:

- Source code must be indented with 4 spaces, no tabs.
- Source files must use Unix-style LF line termination. This is required to avoid problems when using tools such as Subversion, which wrongly think that the entire file has changed if the line ends change.
- Source code must be kept less than 79 columns wide, whenever possible. Common sense should apply; sometimes it's acceptable to have a slightly longer, but more readable, line. Although not specifically required, PEP-8 compliance is desired.