Question

pod

Asked by: JohnLucania

What is the recommened/common pod format/template in practice?  Of course, they will vary, but in general?

I have an example:

=pod

=head1 NAME

Debugging mod_perl Perl Internals

=head1 Description

This document explains how to debug Perl code under mod_perl.

=head1 Maintainers

Maintainer is the person(s) you should contact with updates,corrections and patches.

=over

=item *

Stas Bekman E<lt>stas (at) stason.orgE<gt>

=back

=head1 Authors

=over

=item *

Stas Bekman E<lt>stas (at) stason.orgE<gt>

=back

Only the major authors are listed above. For contributors see the
Changes file.

=cut

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Asked On
2005-11-01 at 08:44:40ID21615300
Topic

Perl Programming Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: kanduraPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:04:54ID: 15202012

I generally use the format that Module::Starter gives you. That's roughly:

=head1 NAME
=head1 VERSION
=head1 SYNOPSIS
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head1 FUNCTIONS or METHODS or EXPORTS
=head1 AUTHORS
=head1 BUGS
=head1 SEE ALSO
=head1 COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

 

by: JohnLucaniaPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:08:12ID: 15202060

what do you mean "=head1 SEE ALSO"?

 

by: JohnLucaniaPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:12:06ID: 15202098

Do you also use single comment lines?
I am trying to see what is good about pod other than putting the basic information like you mentioned above since we can put single comment lines always.

 

by: bradcavanaghPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:24:47ID: 15202222

"=head1 SEE ALSO" can be used to point people to code that's similar to yours, or code that your code builds on. For example, if you extended a module called "Module::Foo", you'd put that module in the "=head1 SEE ALSO" section. Helps to give people some background.

POD is good for having multi-line comments too, similar to the /* */ structure in C. If you want to comment out an entire chunk of code, instead of putting a # before each line (which is tedious), you could put "=head1 COMMENT" at the beginning and "=cut" at the end.

There are also programs out there that'll transform POD into HTML or other formats for easy reading and dissemination.

POD and comment lines are sort of orthogonal. POD is supposed to be the external documentation for your code. It says what your code does. Comment lines are internal documentation. They say how your code does what it does. There's a difference there, really.

For example, you might have a method that takes two matrices and multiplies them. Your POD would say pretty much just that, "takes two matrices and multiplies them." Your comment lines would comment your code for the various steps along the way. I'd imagine comments such as "set up a loop to run along matrix A columns" or "initialize the output matrix". The external user doesn't need to know the nitty-gritty of how you multiply the matrices, only that you do so, but someone maintaining your code (you, perhaps, six months down the line) needs to know that nitty-gritty for debugging purposes.

 

by: ozoPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:37:12ID: 15202326

perldoc perlpod
most
perldoc ModuleName
documentation is written in pod

 

by: JohnLucaniaPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:44:54ID: 15202405

Gurus, wonderful explanations.    I googled but couldn’t find a good one showing examples for documenting classes, methods, attributes, arguments, inheritance, overload, etc.   Documentation is always critical, and I’d like to have a decent example that can be “popularly” used in practice.   Please recommend the examples for classes, methods, attributes, arguments, inheritance, overload, etc.

jl

 

by: bradcavanaghPosted on 2005-11-01 at 10:48:36ID: 15202449

The best way would be to copy the style of some authors who are especially good at it. Take a look at some of Damian Conway's modules to see his POD style; it's usually really good. You could definitely do worse than emulating his POD style.

Also, just go through CPAN (www.cpan.org) to see various other styles of POD.

 

by: kanduraPosted on 2005-11-01 at 11:08:26ID: 15202675

I'd like to point out that you want to keep your documentation template as light as possible. Otherwise it won't be used anymore, because it contains too many sections that may not be relevant to every module. Using one that is pretty much standard on CPAN gives you just enough structure to be useful, but gives the documentor enough freedom to do what he likes. Remember that developers hate having to document; don't overburden them.

 

by: JohnLucaniaPosted on 2005-11-01 at 11:21:58ID: 15202788

That is a good point, but not sure what is the "right amount of burden"!

 

by: kanduraPosted on 2005-11-01 at 12:04:13ID: 15203171

Heh, that certainly depends on the size and composition of your team :)
I like mine pretty big, but my coworker prefers his absent ;)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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