Developer Docs Hackfest

Gothenburg, 20th - 23rd April 2018

Note to attendees
This hackfest is currently a W.I.P proposal. Dates and location can be subject to change.

Primary contact: BastianIlsø (bastianilso, bastianilso (at) gnome.org)
Secondary contact: Tobias Bernard (tbernard, tobias (at) bernard.im)

Relevant GNOME teams

Infrastructure
Newcomers
GNOME Builder
GTK-Doc, Buildstream, GIR, Language bindings
GNOME Documentation Team

Description

The Developer Center hackfest is focusing on kickstarting an effort in GNOME to revamp the developer.gnome.org website and produce developer documentation based on the latest technologies in the GNOME stack. The GNOME Developer Center effectively provides one single place which combines API references of the GNOME stack with guides on specific topics maintained by the documentation team. However, the Developer Center currently faces many limitations such as API references being only available in C and with developer guides being out of date with high barrier of contribution.

These limitations has already been recognized and several people in the community has experimented with new systems which could become possible replacements, such as ReadTheDocs, HotDoc and more. The aim of the Developer Center is therefore, to try to assess what our community's requirements are to a new Developer Center and try to arrive at a proposal which can be evaluated and tested in a proper test instance with ongoing development hosted on a subdomain on gnome.org. Furthermore, the hackfest aims to gather members in the community interested in producing developer documentation, such as documentation guides and video tutorials for popular languages.

Agenda, goals

Creating a workspace wiki page for what we need to have in a future revamp of Developer.gnome.org, in terms of developer documentation and API reference capabilities. Like you did with gitlab.
Creating a subdomain of gnome.org where we keep a test instance of a new developer.gnome.org website.
Coordinate how GNOME Builder will include documentation, and how this might synergize with documentation on the GNOME web, ie. on developer.gnome.org.
Discuss the scope of developer.gnome.org, make a plan for how to solve possible low-maintenance issues (fx an annual hackfest producing new content?) and other isseus which has haunted this piece of infrastructure in the past.
Concretely making guides and recording videos for the GNOME youtube channel which introduces Basic GNOME App development in Python, Javascript and Rust (including GNOME concepts), and creating a playlist for these three programming languages. I can bring equipment to make this happen including video camera and microphone and video editing skills. The plan is not that these videos are "long-term", they might even be something we re-record every year based on a template, just like I make a release video every half a year for GNOME. The point is just to some new documentation, which is reasonably up to date compared to how our technology in GNOME develops.

Timeline

20th April: Attendees arrive
21st April: Plan goals and constraints and evaluate options for Developer Center
22nd April: Continue evaluation, Prepare for a test instance in a gnome.org subdomain
23rd April: Possibility to attend FOSS North conference.
24th April: Attendees leave.

Attendees

Name	Relevant contribution/aim	Arrives on	Departs on	Staying at
BastianIlsø	Designer, Newcomer Guide	2018-04-20	2018-04-24	-
TobiasBernard	Designer	2018-04-20	2018-04-24	-

Costs

todo

How to get there