meilisearch/MeiliSearch

Major lack of documentation in codebase

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#3,206 opened on Dec 7, 2022

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 (5 comments) (2 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (20,887 stars) (733 forks)batch import
contribution accepteddocumentationgood first issue

Description

Describe the bug The codebase significantly lacks documentation. As a newly introduced developer, it makes it hard for me to navigate the codebase and quickly identify which item does what. The documentation is needed as a source of intuition for evaluating whether some code item is valuable for the end-user, and whether it should be modified, and how exactly it should be modified to accomplish the desired behavior.

Without the said documentation, the codebase can easily become a jungle of functions/structs/enums/traits whose names only suffice for achieving a ballpark of correct understanding rather than the exact understanding required to modify the correct code in the correct way.

Documenting the codebase may constitute a significant upfront investment, but I believe it will pay off in the long run.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior: cargo doc --open --document-private-items Alternatively, just look in the code on any arbitrary function/struct/impl/trait/etc. This problem seems to be pervasive throughout most of the codebase.

Expected behavior Each code item (struct, impl, trait, enum, function) should have documentation that explains how the given code item relates to the greater context from the end-user's point of view.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
rust
Domain
searchdocumentation
Issue type
documentation
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
5
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Rust programming languageFamiliarity with the MeiliSearch codebase
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
10
Research direction
The issue requests comprehensive documentation for all code items (structs, functions, traits, etc.) in the MeiliSearch codebase. The current documentation is insufficient, and the reporter suggests using `cargo doc open document private items` to review the extent of missing docs. To address this, a contributor would need to systematically examine each module and add doc comments explaining the purpose and usage of each item from an end user perspective. Since no specific files are mentioned, the work is spread across the entire codebase.