From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
To: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Cc: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
"Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
"Stefan Beller" <sbeller@google.com>, git <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: On shipping more of our technical docs as manpages
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 23:34:04 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180927063404.GB220288@aiede.svl.corp.google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180927062011.GA1318@sigill.intra.peff.net>
Hi,
Jeff King wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 10:44:33PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>> In terms of getting an overview it's indistinguishable from
>> comments. I.e. there's nothing like an index of:
>>
>> man git-api-strbuf ==> working with strings
>> man git-api-sha1-array ==> list, iterate and binary lookup SHA1s
>
> I agree that is a problem, especially for contributors less familiar
> with the code base. But I think generating an index is a separate (and
> much easier) problem than formatting all of the documentation.
>
> We already have the /** convention I mentioned above. Could we have
> another micro-format like:
>
> /** API:strbuf - working with strings */
>
> in each header file? That would make generating such an index pretty
> trivial.
Can you spell out the problem for me a little more? E.g. if we had a
convention that the first comment in strbuf.h should say
/* strbuf - Git's standard string type */
or even just
/* Git's standard string type */
would that do the trick?
>> I'm also not in the habit of opening the *.h file for something, I
>> usually just start reading the *.c and only later discover there's some
>> API docs in the relevant *.h (or not).
>
> Interesting. I'm not totally opposed to putting the documentation
> alongside the actual code. It does feel a bit cluttered to me, but I
> think you're right that it keeps everything as close together as
> possible.
I've experienced projects following both conventions. One thing I like
a lot about documentation in the header file is that it encourages
people to make the API documentation self-contained. That is, you
describe the contract in a way that doesn't require reading the
implementation for details.
It took me a while to get used to this kind of convention but now I
really like it. So I really do prefer to keep putting API
documentation in the header files in Git. (Implementation
documentation in the source files is of course also very welcome.)
>> It means you can't avoid seeing it or updating it when source
>> spelunking, and it leaves header files short, which is useful when you'd
>> like to get a general API overview without all the docs. Our documented
>> headers are quite fat, e.g. strbuf.h is 60% of the size of strbuf.c, but
>> less than 20% when you strip the docs.
>
> I don't use folds in my editor, and I guess nobody else in this thread
> does, either. But they may be a reasonable tool for "wow, there are
> comments, declarations, and definitions all together and I just want to
> view one of them". In vim, try "set foldmethod=syntax" and then "zc" to
> close the folds.
I use kythe to get an outline view of the header files.
[...]
>> E.g. on Debian you can "apt install git-doc" and browse stuff like
>> file:///usr/share/doc/git-doc/technical/api-argv-array.html which is the
>> HTML formatted version, same for all the other api-*.txt docs.
>
> IMHO this is just silly. What am I as an end user going to do with
> api-argv-array.html?
In Debian we just ship all the docs. For something like
technical/pack-heuristics, it's quite nice. For the API docs, I think
they belong in the headers.
Thanks,
Jonathan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-09-27 6:34 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 51+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-09-21 22:35 [PATCHv3 0/8] fetch: make sure submodule oids are fetched Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 1/8] sha1-array: provide oid_array_filter Stefan Beller
2018-09-22 12:58 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-25 19:26 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-26 4:15 ` Jeff King
2018-09-26 17:10 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 17:49 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-26 18:27 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 18:34 ` Jeff King
2018-09-26 18:43 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-26 18:58 ` Jeff King
2018-09-26 19:39 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-26 19:49 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 19:59 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-26 20:19 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 20:51 ` Jeff King
2018-09-26 21:22 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-26 20:44 ` On shipping more of our technical docs as manpages Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-26 21:40 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 23:21 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-27 8:58 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-27 6:20 ` Jeff King
2018-09-27 6:34 ` Jonathan Nieder [this message]
2018-09-27 6:40 ` Jeff King
2018-09-27 17:36 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-27 18:25 ` Jeff King
2018-09-27 21:27 ` [PATCH] Documentation/CodingGuidelines: How to document new APIs Stefan Beller
2018-09-27 21:43 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-27 22:21 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-09-27 23:27 ` Jonathan Nieder
2018-09-28 1:11 ` Jeff King
2018-09-28 16:50 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-28 17:30 ` [PATCH] strbuf.h: format according to coding guidelines Stefan Beller
2018-09-28 19:54 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-28 20:11 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-28 21:38 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-29 7:38 ` Jeff King
2018-09-28 21:42 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-28 21:54 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-28 19:47 ` [PATCH] Documentation/CodingGuidelines: How to document new APIs Martin Ågren
2018-09-29 7:46 ` Jeff King
2018-09-28 17:14 ` Stefan Beller
2018-09-29 7:41 ` Jeff King
2018-09-27 6:48 ` [PATCH 1/8] sha1-array: provide oid_array_filter Jeff King
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 2/8] submodule.c: fix indentation Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 3/8] submodule.c: sort changed_submodule_names before searching it Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 4/8] submodule: move global changed_submodule_names into fetch submodule struct Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 5/8] submodule.c: do not copy around submodule list Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 6/8] submodule: fetch in submodules git directory instead of in worktree Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 7/8] fetch: retry fetching submodules if needed objects were not fetched Stefan Beller
2018-09-21 22:35 ` [PATCH 8/8] builtin/fetch: check for submodule updates for non branch fetches Stefan Beller
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