[Python-Dev] Documenting the private C API (was Re: Questions about signal handling.)

[Barry Warsaw]

On Sep 25, 2018, at 10:18, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> 
> Not really.  Many are just like "static" (i.e. module-private)
> functions, except that they need to be shared by two or three different
> C modules.  It's definitely the case for _PyEval_SignalReceived().

Purely static functions which appear only in the file they are defined in are probably fine not to document, although I do still think we should take care to comment on their semantics and external behaviors (i.e. reference counting).  But if they’re used in multiple C files, then I think they *can* deserve placement within the documentation.

> Putting them in the C API documentation risks making the docs harder to
> browse through for third-party users.  I think it's enough if there's a
> comment in the .h file explaining the given function.

It’s a trade-off for sure.  I don’t have any great ideas about how to balance that, and I don’t know what documentation techniques would help, but it does often bother me that I can’t search for them on docs.python.org.

Cheers,
-Barry

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