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libbpf: Add API documentation convention guidelines
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This adds a section to the documentation for libbpf
naming convention which describes how to document
API features in libbpf, specifically the format of
which API doc comments need to conform to.

Signed-off-by: Grant Seltzer <grantseltzer@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20211004215644.497327-1-grantseltzer@gmail.com
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Grant Seltzer authored and Andrii Nakryiko committed Oct 6, 2021
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40 changes: 40 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/bpf/libbpf/libbpf_naming_convention.rst
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Expand Up @@ -150,6 +150,46 @@ mirror of the mainline's version of libbpf for a stand-alone build.
However, all changes to libbpf's code base must be upstreamed through
the mainline kernel tree.


API documentation convention
============================

The libbpf API is documented via comments above definitions in
header files. These comments can be rendered by doxygen and sphinx
for well organized html output. This section describes the
convention in which these comments should be formated.

Here is an example from btf.h:

.. code-block:: c
/**
* @brief **btf__new()** creates a new instance of a BTF object from the raw
* bytes of an ELF's BTF section
* @param data raw bytes
* @param size number of bytes passed in `data`
* @return new BTF object instance which has to be eventually freed with
* **btf__free()**
*
* On error, error-code-encoded-as-pointer is returned, not a NULL. To extract
* error code from such a pointer `libbpf_get_error()` should be used. If
* `libbpf_set_strict_mode(LIBBPF_STRICT_CLEAN_PTRS)` is enabled, NULL is
* returned on error instead. In both cases thread-local `errno` variable is
* always set to error code as well.
*/
The comment must start with a block comment of the form '/\*\*'.

The documentation always starts with a @brief directive. This line is a short
description about this API. It starts with the name of the API, denoted in bold
like so: **api_name**. Please include an open and close parenthesis if this is a
function. Follow with the short description of the API. A longer form description
can be added below the last directive, at the bottom of the comment.

Parameters are denoted with the @param directive, there should be one for each
parameter. If this is a function with a non-void return, use the @return directive
to document it.

License
-------------------

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