darktable developer docs

Hi,

In the past weeks I’ve been working on creating developer docs. They are admittedly LLM-generated, but I reviewed them to see if they make sense, and of course the core team also had a look before merging them into the repo (the LLM’s authorship had been made clear to them). Whether you are working on new modules, on fixing bugs, or just want to have a peek behind the scenes, you may find them useful. If you use an LLM to help you with your coding, you may want to tell it to ‘read’ them (add them to the context).

They are provided in the hope that they’ll be useful, but I make no guarantees. They were not written by a darktable expert, but by a machine; they have been read and edited by a beginner darktable dev (me). While the core team also had a look, they are busy, so, despite reviews, I’m sure there are problems (factual inaccuracies, omissions, maybe duplications etc.). Unfortunately, you can’t test docs the same way as you can test code.

Also, this is still in flux. I try not to rearrange it too much in the future, but the dust has not settled yet.

Please open issues on Github if you find inaccuracies, or if some topic needs more elaboration / is completely missing.

12 Likes

I look forward contributing to Darktable when I have more free time. So I think this is very nice, thanks.

1 Like

Let’s be considerate and avoid spamming the maintainers with AI slop PRs, though. I think it’s OK to get support from a tool, but we:

  • need to review and understand the code we send in PRs and
  • be ready to support the code in the future. So no “I’ve vibe-coded this, now merge it and support it on your own” attitude. LLMs and agents lower the entry barrier, but darktable is not an individual’s quick and dirty hack tool, so this lowered barrier is also a drawback.
10 Likes