Design principles

dtcore is guided by a small set of explicit design principles intended to support long-lived, portable embedded software written in C.

Flat namespaces

All symbols are explicitly prefixed and organized into flat namespaces.
This avoids implicit coupling and keeps symbol ownership obvious.

Explicit ownership and lifecycle

Memory allocation, ownership transfer, and disposal are always explicit.
Modules never hide allocation or rely on global cleanup.

Structured error propagation

Errors are propagated explicitly through return values and error objects.
There is no reliance on global state or thread-local error storage.

Platform isolation

Operating system services (time, logging, threading, I/O) are accessed through narrow adapters.
The core library remains platform-agnostic.

Readable, portable C

The code prioritizes clarity over cleverness:

• strict compiler warnings,
• no reliance on undefined behavior,
• patterns intended to be read and maintained by humans.

Tests as documentation

Unit tests are written to be read as examples.
They are part of the public API documentation, not just regression guards.