11# Extend with new variants and features
22
3- The following is a brief list of guiding principles to extend ` intel_fw ` .
4- As a library, it should to adhere to those as requirements in order to provide
3+ These guiding principles are meant to help extending ` intel_fw ` over time .
4+ As a library, it should adhere to those as requirements in order to provide
55guarantees to applications working with it. Generally, it should follow the
66[ Rust API guidelines] ( https://rust-lang.github.io/api-guidelines/about.html ) .
77
88## Do not panic!
99
1010Parsing firmware means looking for and acting on offsets and sizes frequently,
1111and they always need to be checked to stay within the bounds of the given data.
12- Never ` unwrap() ` , which means an _ intentional panic_ , in case something cannot
13- be found, read, or recognized. Instead, return instances of ` Self ` for structs,
14- wrapped in a ` Result<Self, CustomError> ` or possibly ` Option<Self> ` .
12+ Never ` .unwrap() ` or ` .expect() ` , which mean an _ intentional panic_ , in case
13+ something cannot be found, read, or recognized. Instead, return instances of
14+ ` Self ` for structs, wrapped in a ` Result<Self, CustomError> ` or possibly
15+ ` Option<Self> ` . Do not ` assert!() ` or explicitly ` panic!() ` either.
16+
17+ ## ` Option ` or ` Result `
18+
19+ In general, use ` Option<Self> ` for things that might not be found. For example,
20+ a full image from a production system would have an IFD at the beginning,
21+ whereas an ME-only image would not. On the other hand, either image is expected
22+ to contain an FPT, so in this case, provide a ` Result<Self, CustomError> ` ,
23+ because not finding an FPT means that something is clearly wrong with the image.
1524
1625## Continuous parsing
1726
@@ -23,8 +32,9 @@ when there is still remaining data that could be parsed, keep going.
2332
2433## Let apps provide feedback
2534
26- In other words, ** let the consuming application take care** of taking the result
27- apart. Nested structures mean that whenever a node in a graph turns into an
35+ Finally, ** let the consuming application take care** of taking the result apart.
36+ Nested structures can be thought of as trees, similar to ASTs in programming
37+ languages. Whenever a node in the tree that is a parsing result turns into an
2838` Error ` or ` None ` , other nodes beside it may still provide useful information.
2939That information helps the user of an app to understand the context and possibly
3040report what they are facing or look into the issue themselves.
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