Dendron Docs in Workspace

The dendron monorepo that contains all the code also contains a Dendron workspace. This workspace includes vaults for internal developer documentation (dendron-docs) as well as the external user documentation (dendron.dendron-site).

You can install Dendron in the same VSCode as the one you are developing the extension in, you will have access to the documentation as you code. If you see any links to the documentation inside the code like // See more [[here]], you can use "Dendron: Goto Note" to navigate to that note and see the documentation.

Looking up docs

You can use Lookup when inside of the main dendron workspace to browse anything in Dendron Developer Docs or the Dendron User Docs (Private)

TIP: if you use the command palette, you can navigate to ../docs.code-search (Private) (or use ctrl+enter) to search through the docs using a search editor. See video here. NOTE: if you do this, do not save the changes as the search editor writes all changes to disk. Simply discard the changes when done

Where to document what?

In comments/docstrings

Low-level implementation details

const start = point.start.line + 1 /* offset because it's 1-indexed */;

// No-op if we're not in a Dendron Workspace
if (!DendronExtension.isActive()) {
    return;
}

Explanation of function parameters

/**
 * Generates a file name for a journal or scratch note.
 *
 * @param type 'JOURNAL' | 'SCRATCH'
 * @param opts Options to control how the note will be named
 * @returns The file name of the new note
 */
static genNoteName(
    type: "JOURNAL" | "SCRATCH" | LookupNoteTypeEnum.task,
    opts?: CreateFnameOpts
) // ...

In Dendron docs

High level overview

## Summary

The engine is the main interface into the core dendron functions (lookup, rename, delete, etc).

When rich markdown (figures, tables etc.) are needed

## Initialization

'``mermaid
sequenceDiagram
    participant client
    participant engine
    ...

How to document

You can follow an amoeba (Private) style workflow for documenting the code.

When writing code, start by adding comments and docstrings
Once the docstrings are starting to become larger than a paragraph or two, move it to a note and link to it
If you are making large changes or design decisions, add a high level overview to Dendron docs

Gotchas

When debugging the development version of Dendron, opening a new workspace in the development version may cause an error message.
- If that happens, stop debugging and restart.
The development version can't open the same workspace as one that you have already open.
- If you have to open that workspace, either close the other instance or make a copy of it and test on the copy.
If you are on an older VSCode version, this may not work correctly.
- Make sure you are on the latest VSCode version.

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