We Are Improving Library Authors’ Experience!

Denis Ambatenne

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A modern programming language ecosystem includes everything from testing frameworks, to libraries for machine learning, to web development frameworks. These options are usually provided to the community by library authors. 

The Kotlin team understands how essential authors’ work is for every user. That is why we want to support them by providing tools and documentation. Library authors’ experience is one of our key priorities for the Kotlin roadmap 2023.

In this post, we will tell you more about our plans and what’s already been done, particularly the Dokka documentation update.

Improving library authors’ experience

We’re focusing on improving the main pain points in documenting public APIs, helping library authors with API design, and providing a convenient development environment setup, including project templates and CI scripts. Read more about our plans and feel free to discuss them in dedicated tickets on YouTrack.

KDoc experience improvements KT-55073.

• Improve the formatting of KDoc and multiline comments.
• Support links to specific overloads in KDoc comments.
• Support highlights and suggestions for sample code in KDoc comments.
• Provide an inspection for missing KDoc comments for the public API when the explicit-api mode is on. 

Dokka stable release. KT-48998

• Stabilize Dokka with the HTML output.
• Release the fully revamped Dokka documentation. 

Kotlin API guide for library authors. KT-55077

• Provide a complete API guide for library authors.
• Describe best practices for JVM and multiplatform library development.
• List some tools that help in library development, including project setup, ensuring backward compatibility, and publishing.

Introducing the new Dokka documentation!

Take a look at the rewritten, more user-friendly Dokka documentation, and let us know your opinion. 

We added Groovy DSL examples for the Gradle project configuration and examples for Maven projects. This will help developers who use these scripting and build tools.

We also reorganized the structure of the pages, added more configuration examples, and provided descriptions of the configuration options to better onboard beginners. 

To learn more about planned improvements for library authors and other Kotlin plans, take a look at the Kotlin Roadmap.

See also

• Blog post: Dokka is in Beta 

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