Re: [PATCH] Documentation/CodingGuidelines: How to document new APIs

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 04:27:32PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>
>> > There are different opinions on how to document an API properly.
>> > Discussion turns out nobody disagrees with documenting new APIs on the
>> > function level in the header file and high level concepts in
>> > Documentation/technical, so let's state that in the guidelines.
>> 
>> I disagree with this.  I think we should put all the API docs in the
>> header file, like we're already doing in e.g. strbuf.h.
>
> Me too.
>
> I think other high-level concepts that are _not_ APIs (e.g., file
> formats, protocol, etc) could go into technical/.
>
> (Though actually, those are the thing that I would not mind at all if
> they get formatted into real manpages and shipped to end users. We do
> not expect most users to dissect our file-formats, but they could at
> least be useful to somebody poking around).
>
>> Do you have a link to where in the discussion this split-docs strategy
>> was decided?
>
> I think the purpose of this patch is to spur people towards a decision.
> :)

OK.

-- >8 --
Subject: CodingGuidelines: document the API in *.h files

It makes it harder to let the API description and the reality drift
apart if the doc is kept close to the implementation or the header
of the API.  We have been slowly migrating API docs out of the
Documentation/technical/api-* to *.h files, and the development
community generally considers that how inline docs in strbuf.h is
done the best current practice.

We recommend documenting in the header over documenting near the
implementation to encourage people to write the docs that are
readable without peeking at the implemention.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
---
 Documentation/CodingGuidelines | 6 +++++-
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
index 6d265327c9..e87090c849 100644
--- a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
+++ b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
@@ -385,7 +385,11 @@ For C programs:
    string_list for sorted string lists, a hash map (mapping struct
    objects) named "struct decorate", amongst other things.
 
- - When you come up with an API, document it.
+ - When you come up with an API, document it the functions and the
+   structures in the header file that exposes the API to its callers.
+   Use what is in "strbuf.h" as a model to decide the appropriate tone
+   in which the description is given, and the level of details to put
+   in the description.
 
  - The first #include in C files, except in platform specific compat/
    implementations, must be either "git-compat-util.h", "cache.h" or