php / php/php-src

Expand/improve docs (https://php.github.io/php-src/)

Open
#15,954 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Category: Documentation Feature Status: Needs Triage
Dominant language
C
Stars
40.4k
Forks
8.1k
Avg merge
2d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
96

Description

Description

Having recently started contributing to PHP, I have found that I frequently needed to look through a bunch of different source files to figure out how different macros/types/patterns are used. I propose expanding https://php.github.io/php-src/ to better document these, to make things easier for new (and hopefully also existing?) contributors.

I'm happy to work on writing the documentation if it would be accepted, and some initial points that I suggest documenting are

  • parameter parsing and function declaration (lots of zend_API.h stuff)
  • the compatibility macros/debug tools/compiler hints (zend_portability.h)
  • data structures other than zval and zend_string, like class entries, properties, constants, and methods (zend_compile.h)
  • globals and the interaction with thread safety (zend_globals.h, zend_globals_macros.h)
  • arrays/HashTable (zend_types.h, zend_hash.h)

And there are probably a whole bunch of other areas that I just haven't run into

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing documentation at php.github.io/php-src/ and the proposed source areas: zend_API.h, zend_portability.h, zend_compile.h, zend_globals.h, zend_globals_macros.h, zend_types.h, and zend_hash.h. Narrow the broad proposal to an agreed contributor-documentation scope, then document the selected macros, types, patterns, or data structures and verify the published documentation covers it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.