What are some of the best practices for robotics software documentation and version control?

1 Documentation basics

Documentation is the written or visual information that describes the functionality, design, testing, and maintenance of your robotics software. Documentation can include code comments, user manuals, technical specifications, diagrams, tutorials, and more. Documentation helps you and your team understand your code, communicate your ideas, debug your errors, and reuse your components. Documentation also helps your users, clients, and stakeholders get the most out of your software and provide feedback.

2 Documentation tools

There are many tools available to help you create, manage, and share your documentation. Doxygen is a popular tool that generates documentation from code comments in various programming languages, such as C++, Python, Java, and more. It can produce HTML, PDF, LaTeX, and other formats, and supports cross-referencing, graphs, and diagrams. Sphinx is another tool that generates documentation from reStructuredText files and can produce HTML, PDF, ePub, and other formats. MkDocs is a tool that generates documentation from Markdown files and can produce HTML, PDF, and other formats. Lastly, GitHub Pages is a service that hosts your documentation online using GitHub repositories with the ability to use any static site generator such as Jekyll, Hugo or Pelican. It also supports custom domains, SSL, and analytics.

4 Version control tools

When implementing version control for your robotics software, there are a variety of tools available to choose from. Git, a distributed version control system, offers fast, flexible, and scalable features including merging, rebasing, and cherry-picking. GitHub is a web-based platform that hosts Git repositories online and provides collaboration features like issues, pull requests, code reviews, and workflows. SVN is a centralized version control system that allows you to create and manage repositories on a server and commit changes from your local machine. Bitbucket is also an online platform that hosts Git or SVN repositories and provides collaboration features such as issues, pull requests, code reviews, and pipelines.

5 Documentation best practices

To create effective documentation for your robotics software, it is important to follow some best practices. This includes writing clear, concise, and consistent documentation that follows a style guide and structure. It is also important to document your code as you write it, using code comments that explain the purpose, logic, and parameters of your functions, classes, and modules. Additionally, you should document your software as a whole, using user manuals that describe the features, requirements, installation, usage, and troubleshooting of your software. Moreover, you should document your design, testing, and maintenance processes by outlining the architecture, components, interfaces, protocols, and standards of your software. Visual aids can also be used to document diagrams, tutorials, and examples that illustrate the functionality, workflow, and results of your software. Finally, it is important to update your documentation regularly as you modify or extend your software.

6 Version control best practices

To implement effective version control for your robotics software, you should use a version control system that suits your needs, preferences, and workflow. Create a repository for each project or component of your software, organized with a logical directory structure and a README file. Utilize branches to isolate and develop new features, bug fixes, or experiments, and then merge them back to the main branch when they are ready. Tag important milestones or releases of your software with semantic versioning to indicate the level of changes. Commit changes to your code and write meaningful commit messages that describe what and why you changed. Pull requests can be used to review and merge changes from other contributors or sources while code reviews ensure quality and consistency. Finally, workflows can be employed to automate tasks such as testing, building, deploying, or documenting your software.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?