[Python-Dev] Best practice for documentation for std lib (original) (raw)

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Sun Sep 22 18:37:15 CEST 2013

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

On Sep 22, 2013, at 10:34 AM, Brett Cannon wrote:

>The rule of thumb I go by is the docstring should be enough to answer the >question "what args does this thing take and what does it do in general to >know it's the function I want and another one in the same module?" quickly >and succinctly; i.e. just enough so that help() reminds you about details >for a module you are already familiar with that might come up while at the >interpreter prompt. Everything else -- in-depth discussion of the >algorithms, extra examples, why you want to use this function, etc. -- all >go in the .rst docs. That's exactly my own rule of thumb too, so +1.

It makes a lot of sense to me too. That said, I don't see a reason why we can't auto-generate the referenc-y stuff from docstrings into the .rst automatically, i.e.:

module.rst:

Algorithms, bla bla bla, examples bla bla bla

<ref:module.py Foo.bar> # << Auto generator pastes function signature and docstring here

More algorithms, more bla bla, examples.

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