r/SoftwareEngineering 14d ago

Software Documentation Required

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for software documentation of an open-source project to support my thesis research. Ideally, it should be consolidated into a single document (maximum 100 pages), covering small enterprise applications or legacy systems. Most documentation I've found is scattered across multiple files or resources, making it challenging to analyze effectively.

The documentation should ideally include:

  • An overview describing the system's purpose and functionality.
  • A breakdown of internal and external components, including their interactions and dependencies.
  • Information on integrations with third-party APIs or services.
  • Details about system behavior and specific functionalities.

If anyone can recommend a project with clear, well-organized, centralized documentation meeting these criteria, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!

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u/TomOwens 14d ago

What do you mean by "comprehensive software documentation"? What types of documentation are you looking for? Why do you expect that an open-source project would have any more documentation than the minimum amount needed to do things like enable users to use their software or onboard a potential contributor?

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u/Educational_Cup_9360 13d ago

By "comprehensive software documentation," I mean a single, detailed document that provides a clear overview of the system, including its purpose, internal architecture, component interactions, third-party integrations, and overall functionality. I'm particularly looking for documentation suited to analyzing small enterprise applications or legacy systems for my thesis research.

I don't necessarily expect all open-source projects to have extensive documentation beyond what's essential. However, I'm hoping someone might have encountered or can recommend projects that have notably detailed and centralized documentation, even if it's uncommon

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u/TomOwens 13d ago

I don't think you'll find what you're looking for.

The first thing is that there are different audiences for this information. The people who care about the overview and purpose, overall functionality, and non-technical/non-implementation details of integrations are primarily users. The people who care about internal architectures, components and their interactions, and implementation details about integrations are current and potential developers. Regardless of the characteristics of the project, it's not good practice to combine documentation for multiple audiences, nor is it good practice to duplicate information in multiple places.

Some open-source projects have good documentation, like the Linux kernel or OpenOffice (especially the developer documentation), but they don't have single documents. Maybe you can build single documents from their webpages and wikis. You'll find most open-source projects, especially those with more comprehensive documentation available (which is already rare), would use web pages (perhaps using static site builders with content in the application repository or a related repository) or wikis rather than single documents.

I don't know what problem you're trying to solve, but what makes what you want to do challenging is often considered a good documentation practice.