[Chandler-dev] Re: More documentation about the repository?

[Andi Vajda]

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Markku Mielityinen wrote:

> This week I had some free time from my Chandler internationalization work, so 
> I started to read all the documentation there is about Chandler (including 
> those in http://chandler.osafoundation.org/docs/0.6/ and the text formatted 
> documentation that there is in the source tree). I became interested in the 
> repository and its design so I tried to find as much information about that 
> as I could. The documents that I found explained clearly how to use the 
> repository in parcels but contained less information about the actual design 
> and implementation of the repository. When I was unable to find a good 
> document about that, I started to browse the source codes, used a couple of 
> days doing that but was unable to reach a really good understanding of how 
> the repository works. I guess it was just the sheer amount of source code 
> lines distributed in so many source files that kept me from seeing a clear 
> hierarchy inside the code, which again prevented me from gaining a good 
> understanding of the repository. Do you have any additional documentation 
> about the repository, possible something that you keep to yourself because 
> you feel that it is not ready for publication, that I could use to increase 
> my understanding of the design.

Sorry, I don't have any hidden documentation. Another source of documentation 
you may not be aware of is the repository blog to which I've been posting not 
so regularly since I'm not too aware of its actual readership:
     http://blogs.osafoundation.org/chandlerdb

I realize that this does not represent comprehensive design docs or any such 
thing but it's a bunch of pretty accurate postings about some repository 
features as I added them.

There is quite a bit of epydoc (API documentation) in the source code. Another 
thing to keep in mind is that the repository code is broken up into two 
pieces: the python code in chandler/repository and the C code (and some python 
too) in internal/chandlerdb. There is also a bunch of epydoc in the C code 
which you can find here:
http://svn.osafoundation.org/chandler/trunk/internal/chandlerdb/chandlerdb/__init__.py

And last but not least: anything about the repository you find on our wiki is 
most likely either wrong or out of date. I don't use the wiki at all. The 
chandlerdb blog is supposed play that role.

Of course, if you have specific questions, feel free to ask either via email 
to me or on the chandler-dev mailing list. If you have ideas about specific 
blog posts I could add to the chandlerdb blog, suggestions are welcome.

Andi..