From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)
To: "Clément Lassieur" <clement@lassieur.org>
Cc: 29438@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [bug#29438] Generating service documentation
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:29:08 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87zi6qbqrv.fsf_-_@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87shciogs0.fsf@lassieur.org> ("Clément Lassieur"'s message of "Sun, 10 Dec 2017 14:26:39 +0100")
Hi Clément,
Clément Lassieur <clement@lassieur.org> skribis:
> It's a bit sad that most services' docstrings are not in sync with the
> .texi file, it would be great to have an automated mechanism to update
> the documentation. I use a hackish Emacs snippet to maintain Prosody
> documentation, but something like "make generate-documentation
> <service>" would be much better. I'll think about it.
>
> @c The following documentation was initially generated by
> @c (generate-documentation) in (gnu services messaging). Manually maintained
> @c documentation is better, so we shouldn't hesitate to edit below as
> @c needed. However if the change you want to make to this documentation
> @c can be done in an automated way, it's probably easier to change
> @c (generate-documentation) than to make it below and have to deal with
> @c the churn as Prosody updates.
>
> I don't really agree with this comment that can be found in several
> places in our documentation. I believe that when there is a
> (generate-documentation) procedure, manual edits shouldn't be
> encouraged. But it's probably not worth updating it while there is no
> easy way to automatically generate the documentation.
It’s complicated. Automatically-generated documentation can be useful
as a reference, but it doesn’t really help you get started. It’s
typically a very unfriendly, Javadoc-style, dump of functions/fields.
It think that’s what this comment is about: generated doc is a start,
but it’s not doing much of a service to our users.
Now, if the choice is between terse-and-outdated doc and
terse-but-automatically-updated doc, the latter is preferable. It’s
just not ideal IMO.
>> Also, I was thinking that ‘guix system search’ could display
>> field/default-value pairs. I’m not 100% sure it’s a good idea because
>> that could be very verbose.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> It would be verbose indeed, and if people want to have details about
> fields and default values, they can search the manual.
Yeah. I was thinking that it might be helpful, let’s say if you’re
using openssh-service-type and you don’t remember the exact name of an
option having to do with authentication. Dunno.
Thanks,
Ludo’.
prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-12-10 14:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-11-25 15:05 [bug#29438] [PATCH 2/2] services: configuration: Show default values of list types Clément Lassieur
2017-11-26 16:31 ` Ludovic Courtès
2017-12-10 13:26 ` Clément Lassieur
2017-12-10 14:29 ` Ludovic Courtès [this message]
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