[jboss-dev] Developer javadoc is essential!

[Jason T. Greene]

Hi Guys,

The javadoc/code comments in our core modules are VERY lacking, so it is 
incredibly difficult for new folks to understand how anything is 
supposed to work (I have been hearing some groaning about this recently).

All of our code, especially SPI or API classes must have javadoc which 
explains in detail the following things:

1) How the module is supposed to be used (and how it is actually used if 
known)
2) The intended behavior, and any aspect of it that is known to be 
broken or a hack (so that someone can differentiate between a design 
problem and just an unimplemented section that needs to be fixed)
3) Crticial preconditions (e.g. "this class expects that the same vfs 
handle instance be reused during a redeploy")
4) Thread-access design (e.g. "this class is thread-safe and can be 
accessed from multiple threads", "this class is not thread-safe, and all 
callers must use a shared lock to access", "this class is intended to 
have an instance-per-thread")

If we can't answer these simple questions, then it is likely our design 
is flawed.

-- 
Jason T. Greene
JBoss, a division of Red Hat