On 04/05/2013 12:00 PM, Joe Watkins wrote:
Morning All,
Further to discussion in IRC this morning, I'd like to propose what
amounts to, I guess, a sub-project to properly document everything,
starting with everything declared ZEND_API in /Zend.
We put a lot of effort into the generation and maintenance of user
land documentation, but there are only scraps of information here and
there, and then ... the accepted way of working with the source is lxr
and lots and lots of reading, which is fine, if you require intricate
knowledge of every part of the API you are interacting with, which
normally you do not, usually it is enough to know of it's existence,
it's usage and implementation is either obvious or irrelevant in the
vast majority of cases, should the function prototype be documented.
I am also aware of some documentation included in the PHP manual
currently, which should also be completed, and included, with all of the
API in a searchable format, just like PHP is in userland.
Ideally, it would be nice to document the API inline, in source,
this means disturbing lots of files, which I'm not keen on, if anyone
has any ideas, speak up. The benefit of inline documentation is that if
a function is changed the changer has the documentation in their
peripheral vision, and the chances of documentation getting stale are
less likely than if they have to document using some separate system.
I'd like to gauge reaction to this idea, and with it a show of
hands, who can actually help ??
Thanks for listening :)
Joe
There seems to be a kind of focus on the things we all know about,
understandably.
To clarify, I do not mean that we should document hashtable and objects
and call it a day, I mean that there is more than 1000 exported ZEND_API
or PHPAPI functions in the source code this evening ... here's a list:
http://pastebin.com/42xFsNQ0
Drop the scrollbar anywhere random, have you written what you land on
more than once ?? Think it's probably worth the time now ?? Surely
writing extensions and developing patches and ideas would become much
easier if this knowledge was easily accessible and documented, surely
you'll get the time back you put in 10 fold ??
Food for thought ....
Nite ...
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