Unify explanation of the extern qualifier

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start by comparing the "Extern block item," "Function item," and ABI sections to map the duplicated extern qualifier and ABI details. Move the ABI material to the appropriate ABI section, create a unified extern qualifier section, and replace the existing explanations with brief references; done means the relevant behavior is explained without requiring readers to consult all three sections.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Right now, the explanation of the extern qualifier is split into the "Extern block item" and the "Function item" section, where the "Extern block item" section also contains multiple relevant details about ABIs.

This ends up requiring users that want to check some property of how these parts of the language work to visit the ABI, the extern block, and the function sections of the reference to get the whole picture.

I think it would be better to:

  • move the ABI details described in the "extern block" section to an appropriate section (e.g. the ABI section)
  • move the explanation of the extern qualifier (in extern block items and function items) to its own section
  • change the function and extern block sections to just briefly mention the extern qualifier, and refer users to that section

That should make it much easier to explain what the extern qualifier works.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
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Forks
607
Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
12

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