[tor-bugs] #2661 [Company]: Find best way to fit coding convention notes into wiki

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#2661: Find best way to fit coding convention notes into wiki
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 Reporter:  tomb                    |          Owner:  tomb
     Type:  enhancement             |         Status:  new 
 Priority:  normal                  |      Milestone:      
Component:  Company                 |        Version:      
 Keywords:  wiki coding convention  |         Parent:      
   Points:  1                       |   Actualpoints:      
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Comment(by tomb):

 Replying to [comment:3 rransom]:
 > Replying to [ticket:2661 tomb]:
 > Information on the wiki is less likely to be seen (and far less likely
 to be trusted) by the new volunteers who need to see it than information
 in Git.
 >
 > The best way to make the HACKING file more useful is to put it in the
 root directory of the Tor Git repo (rather than hiding it under doc/ where
 it is now), and keep it up to date.

 I do have one question about this, which is that some people may check out
 some piece of Tor other than tor.  For example, my target audience with
 the R coding conventions may be people who are just checking out metrics,
 or torperf.  What is the best way to help such people find the
 information?  Word of mouth is great, but doesn't scale well.  I
 fortunately found and read HACKING early on, but only because I chose to
 do a long march through all the files in the main tor repository.  I am
 not sure I would want to expect, for example, an undergrad trying to make
 a small contribution as a class project to have to do this.  Even though I
 actually read HACKING a few months ago, reading through it today I realize
 that it answers questions I have recently been asking on the IRC channels.
 If the information was more easily searchable I might have wasted less of
 other people's time.  Also, I feel kind of dumb asking some of these
 simple questions, and for some people that feeling might present a barrier
 to participation.

 I note that when I google for "tor coding convention" the only relevant
 hit is this ticket.  I did a non-scientific totally random set of google
 searches on some of the phrases in the HACKING file and got no relevant
 hits on the first page of results.

 I am not at all suggesting that the wiki is the only or the best way to
 make this information accessible, but I am willing to spend time
 implementing whatever people decide is a better solution.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2661#comment:4>
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