There is fpdoc, and the FPC docs are quite ok. The problem is contributors.
In my experience (and in that of the people I brought along, as well as
already existing devs around me), no, they aren't OK. They're passable
at times, yes, but they aren't what I would call "good". I have been
slowly going through the FP docs and improving this as I go on my
private fork, once I get more time and go through everything I'll send a
PR. This is one way people who might otherwise be scared of compiler
code can contribute. Actually, there should probably be a call to action
regarding contributors and tell people how to help either team (FP or
Laz). I am sure there are people on the forums who would be more than
glad to help, but are intimidated by the thought of dealing with
compiler code, not knowing they can contribute with bug reports or docs.
Or because we spread ourselves too thin. Having dreams of an ivory tower
that somehow restores equilibrium ( new developers > old developers) is
easy. Making the economics work is much harder.
Attempting to whipold and tired Lazarus developers into submission to
work on vscode plugins IMHO it doesn't make sense. In short, I think the
new IDEs developers must come from the new developers ranks, those who
actually believe in it.
I mentioned that, in the previous quotation you used. We can't expect
people that are already working on the compiler and Lazarus to also work
on VSCode extensions and whatnot, that's absurd for plenty of reasons.
Nothing good can come out of overworking the current team, so this is a
call to the community (that should be made on the forums too, I am sick
of repeating the same message over on the "Unofficial" Free Pascal
Discord server) to help.
We all have to realize that nobody will implement these things for us,
and complaining is easy when you're just a bystander unwilling to
contribute. I have discussed these things with the Discord server and
have started a GitHub org for this purpose (strictly speaking focused on
Object Pascal as a whole, but it's a cover-up to work on things related
to Free Pascal for now). But this shouldn't be a one man project, it
should involve /everyone/, so the CtA in the first paragraph is even
more important.
--
Stefan-Iulian Alecu
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