Re: [PATCH] document string_list_clear

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 10, 2014, 22:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20141210223721.GG16345@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqlhmff8cs.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
>> Michael Haggerty wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

>>>                              I would find it a pity for that work to be
>>> squashed into Documentation/technical/api-*.txt, where in my opinion it
>>> is less discoverable and more likely to fall into disrepair.
>>
>> I think we're in violent agreement and keep repeating ourselves.
>
> Hmph, I am confused.
>
> I somehow had an impression that the "move to doc and remove from
> header" patch was to illustrate how unpleasant the result will be as
> a whole (i.e. results in a nice documentation as a starting point,
> but we can see that it will be hard to motivate and help people to
> keep it up to date during further development).  Which would suggest
> that you are in favor of moving the other way around, to keep the
> header rich with documentation only at the higher level.  Am I
> reading you correctly?

Sorry, I think I was unclear.

Some possibilities, in order of my preference (earlier items are better):

 1. Move documentation to header and provide a program to generate a nice
    standalone document.

 2. Move documentation to header, being careful enough that the header
    sort of works as a standalone document.

 3. Move documentation to Documentation/technical/ and keep the header
    bare-bones.

 4. Status quo (comprehensive documentation for some functions in both
    places, for others in only one place, no reliable way for someone
    to find the information they need in one place).

Since (3) is better than (4), I wrote simple patches to do that for strbuf.h and string-list.h. I meant them in earnest --- I hope they get applied.

I think peff was working on (2), which is an admirable goal. The patch seemed to be incomplete.

Thanks, Jonathan