Announcing the Tokio Doc Push (we need you!)

October 04, 2018

In the past, there has been reoccurring feedback that Tokio is hard to understand. I believe a lack of good documentation plays a significant part. It’s time to fix this problem.

And because Tokio is open source, it is on us (the community) to make this happen! 👏

But don’t worry, this isn’t an aimless request to contribute documentation. It does, however, require participation. There are ways to get involved at any level of prior Tokio experience.

The Tokio documentation push

Here is the plan. A temporary repository doc-push has been setup, and that is where the documentation effort will be coordinated. The README has steps on how to get started. Roughly, the process will be:

1) Read the existing documentation, tracking parts that are confusing or leave questions unanswered.

2) Open an issue on the doc-push repository to report the confusion.

3) Fix the issue.

4) Repeat.

Where “fix the issue” is fix an existing guide or write a new guide.

Writing new guides

To get the effort of writing new guides bootstrapped, the doc-push repository has been seeded with an outline representing my best guess of how the guides should be structured.

Anyone can volunteer to write a page from this outline. Just submit a PR adding your Github handle next to the page. For example, if you wanted to volunteer to write a guide on timeouts, you would submit a PR updating the section, changing Status: Unassigned to Status: Assigned (@myname).

Also, feedback and suggestions on the outline structure is greatly appreciated. Please open issues and PRs agains the outline.

There is also a new Gitter channel dedicated to the doc push. If you want to get involved, but need some guidance. Join the channel and ping us. Perhaps you want to try to write a guide, but don’t quite feel up to the task yet. Ping us, and we will help you through it.

An experiment

The doc push is an experiment. I don’t know how it will go, but I am hopeful that it will be successful.

It is also an iterative effort. Once a pass at improving the guides happens, we need to go back to step 1) and have new comers try to learn Tokio using the new documentation. This will expose new gaps which will need to be addressed.

FAQ

I don’t know Tokio yet!

First, this isn’t a question.

Second, great! You are who we want to get involved. We need fresh eyes to go over the guides and report issues that they hit.

Things that you can do:

• Read the existing guide and report issues.
• Brainstorm items for the cookbook or “gotchas” sections.
• Review and provide feedback on PRs to the website.

I would like to contribute guides, but I am uncertain that I am able to

Still not a question!

You know what they say: “teaching is the best way to learn”. This is a great opportunity to learn Tokio. First, there are some outlines to get you started. These outlines will probably result in you having questions or need some pointers. Perhaps you need to learn the topic first before writing the guide!

We are in the Gitter channel waiting eagerly to help you along. We will help you learn what you need to. In exchange, you will contribute a guide 😊.

tl;dr

This is your opportunity to help make Tokio easier to learn. It won’t happen without volunteering for the doc push. In short:

1) Join the Gitter.

2) Watch the repo.

3) Get involved!