[Bf-taskforce25] Developer Docs

[Roland Hess]

Howdy. I've been looking ahead to some down time before my next project 
kicks in, and was hoping to spend it doing some work on 2.5 (maybe 
operator-i-fying some armature and anim stuff, python-i-fying headers, 
etc.) but have run into a snag. It seems as though the developer docs 
that were quite popular at the beginning of this whole project have 
fallen behind the times. I tried to work through these projects by 
simply reading the code, but without anything at all to guide (i.e. 
comments in the code), I'm getting the feeling that it's just too much 
work for the time I have available.

What would be great from a returning developer's point of view (and I'm 
sure it would benefit future devs as well), would be to have examples of 
some of the new structures well-documented within the code. For example, 
when adding header menus and elements for a new space type (Action space 
still uses the old structure) it would be instructive to have at least 
one of the other existing space types that has already been converted 
have explanatory comments within the code. I realize that for those of 
you who came up with the concepts for how all of this new stuff works 
internally, this is pretty simple and obvious stuff. For those of us who 
would like to pitch in, though, there is no doc that says: python-based 
header menus require items 1,2,3 and a,b,c. I suppose that one could 
really take a couple of weeks, read all of the code, figure out what's 
relevant and what isn't, what's canon and what's a hack, and then start 
pecking away with trial and error until the light goes on. However, I 
think it would be much better if the way this stuff works were actually 
written down somewhere.

Not sure how many people are in my same boat, i.e. if I understand the 
structure and specs I can do the work. It might be a lot. It might be 
just me. From the looks of things, there is plenty of dev help at this 
point, so it might not even be worth the time to really document these 
new processes.

Anyway, thanks for listening.
Roland Hess
harkyman