ANN: Updating flag description in the User's Guide
Simon Marlow
marlowsd at gmail.com
Fri Nov 7 11:42:17 UTC 2014
On 06/11/2014 13:02, Jan Stolarek wrote:
>> Sometimes we add flags that are for experimentation or development
>> purposes and not intended for user consumption, and these tend not to be
>> added to the User's Guide. I suspect many of the flags you mention fall
>> into this category. I suggest for these we have a specific comment in
>> the source "developer use only; undocumented" so that we know they don't
>> need to go in the User's Guide.
> I don't like that policy. What if some of the mentioned flags could be useful for my development
> work but I have no idea how to use these flags because they are not documented? I think we should
> have these documented as well, possibly with a note saying that this is experimental/unstable.
Requiring that all experimental flags be fully documented in the User's
Guide is both too onerous for the developer, and too confusing for
users, IMO. It's a User's Guide, not a developer's guide, after all!
The developer has access to the source code, so they can find out what a
flag actually does, and if it's not obvious then a comment should suffice.
Cheers,
Simon
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