nav_core/Reviews/2009-10-06_Doc_Review

Reviewer:

Instructions for doing a doc review

See DocReviewProcess for more instructions

1. Does the documentation define the Users of your Package, i.e. for the expected usages of your Stack, which APIs will users engage with?
   • Yes, users wanting to swap out the planner or local controller components of move_base for their own custom components.
2. Are all of these APIs documented?
   • Yes
3. Do relevant usages have associated tutorials? (you can ignore this if a Stack-level tutorial covers the relevant usage), and are the indexed in the right places?
   • There are no relevant tutorials at the stack level. Some day it would be nice to have a tutorial for writing your own global and local planner, but this definitely counts as an advanced level tutorial, so for now it is fine that no such tutorial exists.
4. If there are hardware dependencies of the Package, are these documented?
   • N/A
5. Is it clear to an outside user what the roadmap is for the Package?
   • There is nothing explicit, implicitly it is a stable interface specification.
     • Added API Stability sections
6. Is it clear to an outside user what the stability is for the Package?
   • See above. An explicit stability section could be added, but I'm not sure it's needed.
7. Are concepts introduced by the Package well illustrated?
   • Yes, the diagram gives a clear picture of the components in question.
8. Is the research related to the Package referenced properly? i.e. can users easily get to relevant papers?
   • N/A
9. Are any mathematical formulas in the Package not covered by papers properly documented?
   • N/A

For each launch file in a Package

• N/A

1. Is it clear how to run that launch file?
2. Does the launch file start up with no errors when run correctly?
3. Do the Nodes in that launch file correctly use ROS_ERROR/ROS_WARN/ROS_INFO logging levels?

Concerns / issues

• Was there a resolution on the dead-link issue Vijay brought up? It would be nice if say the tutorials link went to a more specific search page (see for example laser_assembler, even if there currently do not exist any tutorials.

Conclusion

• Everything is basically OK. Check on the dead-link issue and think about whether an explicit "this is a stable interface" statement is needed. Eventually adding a tutorial on writing your own nav_core plugins would be a great addition.
  • Added API Stability sections
  • Tutorials will definitely come later
  • I guess I'll try and go through the navstack and at least have those links point to pages that exist. I'm still not sure they really belong on the sidebar to begin with, but being there and dead is definitely worse.