This is not specifically about syntax, but includes some info about trunk 
checkins in general.

Rules
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1. Use comments, and make them docstrings.  epydoc will automatically generate 
HTML docs from this.
2. Do not modify auto-generated code (thrift output specifically).
3. If you're going to make a big change to the code (restructuring, replacing 
core functionality, etc.), do it in a branch and do it in such a way that life 
is not painful for the trunk maintainer.
4. If you're going to make a big change to the code, only make one big change 
at a time.
5. You should not check in code you know doesn't work to trunk.
6. Library dependencies should not require the newest releases of packages.  A 
rule of thumb: if it doesn't work on something a year old (feisty at the time 
of this writting), it doesn't count as working.
7. When making a big change, if you would like it to eventually go into trunk 
(and you should always want that -- this is an Apache project), make sure that 
everybody who would care about what you're doing atleast gives some form of 
approval.

Testing
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Currently, testing means testing the classes that implement an interface 
(VmControlInterface, DFSInterface, etc) as well as the RPC servers (test every 
RPC call).  Additionally, it means regression testing.  We are not currently 
doing strict unit testing.