launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 21 November 2010 04:23, Robert Collins <robert.collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 4:37 AM, Aaron Bentley <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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>> Before we open-sourced, there was a clear separation between developers
>> and end users, and it made sense to put API help on help.launchpad.net,
>> not the developer wiki.  We were implying that API client developers
>> were a kind of user.
>
> I don't think the separation was that clear: we had many end users who
> had access to the source code but chose to file bugs rather than
> patches - all of Canonical. And we still have that separation today:
> there are many folk who for their own reasons don't want to develop
> Launchpad, they just want to use it.

> I do agree that the help.launchpad.net site is particularly focused on
> end users, but I don't think casual scripters will be helped by
> searching on a site that includes things like style guides,
> development processes and so on.
>
> Perhaps making sure all the API help is under /API/, or perhaps a
> help.api.launchpad.net site dedicated to the API ?

+1, I think the API is a separate thing from plain end user help and
from developer documentation, though of course it should be linked
from both.

At the moment you do sometimes need to read the source or think like a
developer to understand the API (eg http://pad.lv/486974) but that's
not really the goal.  I hope.

-- 
Martin