digital-asset / digital-asset/canton
[Docs] Add comprehensive documentation for External Calls feature
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- Dominant language
- Scala
- Stars
- 143
- Forks
- 55
- Avg merge
- 2d 9h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 28
Description
With the recent introduction of external calls (see ExtensionServiceConfig), we need to provide comprehensive documentation for developers and operators prior to the feature release.
This issue covers writing end-to-end usage guides, language references, and security guidelines.
Definition of Done
Please ensure the documentation covers the following areas:
- End-to-End Guide: A step-by-step tutorial or workflow showing how to configure and use external calls from end to end.
- Language Reference: Reference documentation for all new Daml keywords such as
externalCall(syntax, arguments, and return types). - Operational & Security Assumptions: Clear documentation on critical assumptions regarding security and correctness, specifically:
- Determinism: External services must produce deterministic results.
- Topology & Connectivity: Which participant nodes need to be connected to an external service.
- Trust Model: Trust assumptions between participant nodes and their connected external services (and vice versa).
cc @angelol
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading the ExtensionServiceConfig implementation and the existing external-call entry points, then trace how externalCall is configured and used. Done means published documentation with an end-to-end workflow, complete keyword syntax and type details, and explicit determinism, connectivity, trust, security, and correctness assumptions.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- scala
- Domain
- distributed-systems, documentation, security
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 62/100