House Conventions

Important

The pages below record design rulings for pcapkit – decisions that are not derivable from the code, and that a future maintainer or an automated contributor would otherwise have to rediscover by reading a closed issue thread. Each ruling names where it was settled.

Most of them govern pcapkit.const, which is where the settled questions have mostly arisen, and the page was titled Registry Conventions until #918 widened it, then split it. Which bases an IPv6 extension header names is the first ruling here that governs a protocol class hierarchy rather than a registry.

A ruling that stays in its thread is a ruling that gets rediscovered. So when a question is answered in a way the code cannot express on its own – a classification, a naming rule, a deliberate asymmetry – it is written onto the page that covers it in the same change that implements it, rather than left in the issue for the next contributor to find. The owner’s standing ask, on #918: “And any future conventions to be settled - document them as well.”

• When an unrecognised value may mint a member
• Naming a sentinel
• Where the registry protocol lives
• Which bases an IPv6 extension header names