Add docFn to lib, to automatically generate documentation for lib functions #23505

moretea · 2017-03-04T22:38:32Z

This enables generating documentation about the lib.* functions automatically, and opens doors to a poor mans auto-complete of the standard library functions.

Motivation for this change

Currently it's pretty hard to find out which library functions exist. You have to manually scroll, or grep through the files in lib.

As a proof of concept, I've moved some of the functions in lib/strings.nix to use this docFn function.
The resulting manual build can be seen here.

Implementation

It shows the top level functions made available in lib and the functions that are scoped in a sub attrset (e.g. lib.strings.y) in two different places. The first will be more commonly used than the latter.

Discussion

These library functions are used everywhere. This PR is implemented with functors, which might be to slow.
As an alternative, if this proves to be too slow, we could look into adding doc comments to Nix, that will be parsed and made inspectable just like builtins.functionArgs is today. (see the partial implementation)

This enables generating documentation about the lib.* functions automatically, and opens doors to a poor mans auto-complete with the standard library functions.

mention-bot · 2017-03-04T22:38:34Z

@moretea, thanks for your PR! By analyzing the history of the files in this pull request, we identified @edolstra, @zimbatm and @abbradar to be potential reviewers.

ericsagnes · 2017-03-05T01:01:18Z

Interesting! I use a similar approach to document styx functions and templates.
I didn't benchmark but this didn't seem to impact performance much, but as nixpkgs is much larger and complex, it might be of real impact.
This can also be pushed one step further to generate tests from examples.

PS: Example of generated function docs with examples and arguments here.

ericsagnes · 2017-03-10T20:12:21Z

doc/default.nix

+  libDocJSON = builtins.toFile "options.json" (builtins.toJSON (import ./fn-docs.nix));
+  libDocBook= pkgs.runCommand "options-db.xml" {} ''
+    ${pkgs.ruby}/bin/ruby ${./lib2docbook.rb} < ${libDocJSON} > $out
+  '';


The fn-docs.nix -> function docbook conversion is simple enough so it could be done in plain nix instead of using ruby. That will also remove the need of the json conversion.
Nit: options.json options-db.xml copy paste miss? :)

All fixed in a801c0b. Thanks!

zimbatm · 2017-03-11T16:52:20Z

Would it make sense to have a pure Nix XML builder? https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c52b3c9ca41f586a95a113d1a2bb26d3#file-to_xml-nix-L49-L63

moretea · 2017-03-13T11:56:23Z

@zimbatm I would use that if it was in nixpkgs.

moretea · 2017-03-13T11:56:51Z

I'm wondering what people think about this idea, should I start drafting a RFC for this?

zimbatm · 2017-03-14T11:04:29Z

lib/fndoc.nix

+  let documentedFunction =
+    {
+      type = "documentedFunction";
+      __functor = self: x: fn x;


Is that a magic accessor like __toString?

If yes, what are the performance implications? Given that lib is used everywhere it might be problematic.

@zimbatm I was also curious about __functor performance so I made a quick little benchmark here. (Not sure if it is the right way to benchmark nix function calls and if the results have any relevance)

Anyway, the results show that the use of functor increased the number of cycles by about 3% for that test.

I don’t know if that benchmark shows anything for nixpkgs itself. The complete evaluation of all (non-broken) package should be benchmarked, right?

zimbatm · 2017-03-14T11:05:18Z

doc/manual.xml

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
  <xi:include href="cross-compilation.xml" />
  <xi:include href="configuration.xml" />
  <xi:include href="functions.xml" />
+  <xi:include href="lib.xml" />


I'm lazy, is there a rendered example somewhere?

@zimbatm yes, see my top comment. The last refactor did not modify the content at all.

FRidh · 2017-07-28T12:51:32Z

Just now there was a discussion again on IRC about this PR as well as #27394. Comparing the two,
this one seems neater because you won't have the problem of strings/sets of documentation ending up in your sets. As @zimbatm and @Profpatsch pointed out, there may indeed be performance implications.

@LnL7 and @grahamc just had the idea of rewriting the documented functions to just the bare functions when evaluating the fixpoint when something like docs ? false is passed.

grahamc · 2017-07-29T14:21:33Z

My testing suggests this does not appreciably harm performance in some limited testing. @LnL7 also did some testing, and his results agreed with mine. I think we should continue with this route by setting up an eval on hydra to see how it really behaves. Perhaps also merging in some functionality /feedback from #27394 like:

types in an attribute
@edolstra's inputs / output example here for tests: nixpkgs: poor mans doc blocks wip / rfc / etc #27394 (comment)

I did also make lib a fixed-point to make it easier to replace the docsfn (master...grahamc:fixed-lib) but I'd rather not merge this.

edolstra · 2017-07-30T21:53:15Z

I don't know, this approach strikes me as too much magic. Values really should not produce different results depending on how they're evaluated (i.e. the x in the expression x y can now mean something different than the x in x.y). I'm not super fond of __functor for that reason.

An approach that doesn't rely on __functor would be something like:

id =
  { docString = "bla bla...";
    examples = [ ... ];
    implementation = x: x;
  };

and do a mapAttrs (n: v: v.implementation) in lib/default.nix.

Profpatsch · 2017-08-01T00:30:41Z

I'm not super fond of __functor for that reason.

I’m curious: In what way does __functor resemble a functor?

danbst · 2019-01-11T01:17:55Z

Approach in #53055 is less invasive and more in-line with docs-from-code approaches for other languages (Python and Haskell at least).

Closing this.

@Profpatsch probably it is more like functor from C++, rather than Functor from Haskell.

Add docFn function to lib.

28df077

This enables generating documentation about the lib.* functions automatically, and opens doors to a poor mans auto-complete with the standard library functions.

ericsagnes reviewed Mar 10, 2017

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Moved string templating to nix

a801c0b

zimbatm reviewed Mar 14, 2017

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grahamc mentioned this pull request Jul 16, 2017

nixpkgs: poor mans doc blocks wip / rfc / etc #27394

Closed

Ekleog mentioned this pull request Dec 12, 2018

Add generated documentation for library functions #49275

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danbst closed this Jan 11, 2019

FRidh mentioned this pull request Dec 19, 2020

[RFC 0067] Common override interface derivations NixOS/rfcs#67

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Add docFn to lib, to automatically generate documentation for lib functions #23505

Add docFn to lib, to automatically generate documentation for lib functions #23505

moretea commented Mar 4, 2017 •

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danbst commented Jan 11, 2019

Add docFn to lib, to automatically generate documentation for lib functions #23505

Add docFn to lib, to automatically generate documentation for lib functions #23505

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moretea commented Mar 4, 2017 • edited Loading

Motivation for this change

Implementation

Discussion

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ericsagnes commented Mar 5, 2017 • edited Loading

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