[dev] Missing developer documentation

Tue Dec 12 08:17:49 EST 2017

Thanks Olivier,

see below.

On 12/12/2017 07:55 AM, olivier.dugeon at orange.com wrote:
> Hi Quentin, Lou,
> 
> I search in my note and didn't find any reference to this decision nor
> any answer to my original mail on the list. I just remember that we talk
> about the developer documentation during a weekly meeting, but didn't
> remember about such decision. Perhaps David has a better memory.
> 
> Disregarding this point, I agree with Lou about documentation format. We
> must keep only one. Up to now, we have 4 different formats: txt, texi,
> md and rest. There is at least 2 too many. I mean, texi is mandatory in
> order to produce man pages and then we have to choose between txt, md
> and rest. Txt is too light and don't allow any emphasis. So, the choice
> is between md and rest.
> 

I'm okay with either, but have a slight bias for not changing unless
there is a good reason to change.  Quoting from the compatibility
section of Community.md, which I think is generally applicable here:

   This is not to say that minor or even major functional changes to
   CLI and common code should be avoided, but rather that the benefit
   gained from a change should be weighed against the added
   cost/complexity to existing code.

Most important to me is for there to be a community discussion and
agreement.

If we have closed/limited discussion on direction changes of the
project, we'll be no better off than we were before the fork.  For me
this is the most important attribute of FRR, i.e., that it is community
driven vs driven by the decisions of one (person, company, interest
group, etc).  If we revert to that model of operation, my interest in
this project will severely wane.

Thanks,
Lou

> Just to helpin the decision, there is converter between the rest and md
> format that allowus to not loose previous efforts and contributions:
> 
> https://github.com/chrissimpkins/md2rst
> 
> https://github.com/cgwrench/rst2md
> 
> Regards
> 
> Olivier
> 
> Le 11/12/2017 à 22:34, Quentin Young a écrit :
>> Just to add some background here—
>>
>> My recollection is that we held the meeting Lou mentioned between the
>> date of Olivier’s email (July 25) and August 8th. On August 8th, we
>> merged the following pull request from David Lamparter:
>>
>> https://github.com/FRRouting/frr/pull/929
>>
>> Note my comment on this PR (#929) where I state my opinion on the need
>> to make a decision on the docs format before merging RST. The comment
>> was later edited (with the edited part marked) to state we had agreed
>> on RST; as I recall, I did this because we agreed on RST in a meeting.
>>
>> The current PR Lou referenced is this one:
>>
>> https://github.com/FRRouting/frr/pull/1530
>>
>> In light of #929, referring to #1530 as “starting this change” may be
>> a slight mischaracterization. My 2c.
>>
>> Quentin
>>
>>> On Dec 11, 2017, at 4:18 PM, Lou Berger <lberger at labn.net
>>> <mailto:lberger at labn.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> so it seems there was some discussion on this in August where the
>>> agreement among those who participated in that weekly call was to
>>> move to reStructuredText (reST) .
>>>
>>> Does anyone care to comment on this? , i.e. are you (not) okay with
>>> replacing the current md and texi formats with reST? 
>>>
>>> There is a PR starting this change...
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Lou
>>>
>>> PS  I have no memory of the discussion (and may even have been there
>>> with glazed over eyes) so was surprised by the PR
>>>
>>> On 7/25/2017 9:35 AM, Olivier Dugeon wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hiall,
>>>>
>>>> There is missing developer documentation in FRR. In PR #805 I try to
>>>> update an old Zebra hacking document, but that seems too old to be
>>>> publish, so I prefer to remove it as suggested during the PR review.
>>>>
>>>> For me, the main problem is how to start writing a such documentation ?
>>>>
>>>> First, it is too huge and to complicated to be written by only one
>>>> person.
>>>>
>>>> Second, we need a dedicated space (e.g. a new doc project inside
>>>> FRRouting) to collectively write such documentation and then push
>>>> into frr master documents when they are ready.
>>>>
>>>> Finally, we need to organize themselves in order to collectively
>>>> decided how to write them, to formalize the document through a
>>>> common template, to harmonize the documentation...
>>>>
>>>> I would start by proposing:
>>>>   * start discussion about this new topic (create a new issue in
>>>> github) during regular meeting
>>>>   * decide the document format (Markdown, in line github Wiki,
>>>> LaTeX, TeXi ...)
>>>>   * create a new doc project within FRRouting
>>>>   * propose template
>>>>   * propose Table of Content for each document (perhaps partially
>>>> common)
>>>>   * open contribution to the different documents
>>>>
>>>> Comments are welcome.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>
>>>> Olivier
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> dev mailing list
>>>> dev at lists.frrouting.org
>>>> https://lists.frrouting.org/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> dev at lists.frrouting.org <mailto:dev at lists.frrouting.org>
>>> https://lists.frrouting.org/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
>>
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