The Rust Bookshelf

Author: steveklabnik

text/0000-rust-bookshelf.md

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+- Feature Name: N/A
+- Start Date: 2016-12-25
+- RFC PR: 
+- Rust Issue: 
+
+# Summary
+[summary]: #summary
+
+Create a "Rust Bookshelf" of learning resources for Rust.
+
+* Pull the book out of tree into `rust-lang/book`, which holds the second
+  edition, currently.
+* Pull the nomicon and the reference out of tree and convert them to mdBook.
+* Pull the cargo docs out of tree and convert them to mdBook.
+* Create a new "Nightly Book" in-tree.
+* Provide a path forward for more long-form documentation to be maintained by
+  the project.
+
+# Motivation
+[motivation]: #motivation
+
+There are a few independent motivations for this RFC.
+
+* Separate repos for separate projects.
+* Consistency between long-form docs.
+* A clear place for unstable documentation, which is now needed for
+  stabilization.
+* Better promoting good resources like the 'nomicon, which may not be as well
+  known as "the book" is.
+
+These will be discussed further in the detailed design.
+
+# Detailed design
+[design]: #detailed-design
+
+Several new repositories will be made, one for each of:
+
+* The Rustinomicon ("the 'nomicon")
+* The Cargo Book
+* The Rust Reference Manual
+
+They will all use mdBook to build. They will have their existing text re-worked
+into the format; at first a simple conversion, then more major improvements.
+Their currnet text will be removed from the main tree.
+
+The first edition of the book lives in-tree, but the second edition lives in
+`rust-lang/book`. We'll remove the existing text from the tree and move it
+into `rust-lang/book`.
+
+A new book will be created from the "Nightly Rust" section of the book. It
+will be called "The Nightly Book," and will contain unstable documentation.
+This came up when [trying to document RFC
+1623](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/37928). We don't have a unified
+way of handling unstable documentation. This will give it a place to develop,
+and part of the stabilization process will be moving documentation from this
+book into the other parts of the documentation.
+
+The nightly book will be organized around `#![feature]`s, so that you can look
+up the documentation for each feature, as well as seeing which features
+currently exist.
+
+The landing page on doc.rust-lang.org will show off the full bookshelf, to let
+people find the documenation they need. It will also link to their respective
+repositories.
+
+Finally, this creates a path for more books in the future: "the FFI Book" would
+be one example of a possibility for this kind of thing. The docs team will
+develop critera for accepting a book as part of the official project.
+
+# How We Teach This
+[how-we-teach-this]: #how-we-teach-this
+
+The landing page on doc.rust-lang.org will show off the full bookshelf, to let
+people find the documenation they need. It will also link to their respective
+repositories.
+
+# Drawbacks
+[drawbacks]: #drawbacks
+
+A ton of smaller repos can make it harder to find what goes where.
+
+Removing work from `rust-lang/rust` means people aren't credited in release
+notes any more. I will be opening a separate RFC to address this issue, it's
+also an issue without this RFC being accepted.
+
+Operations are harder, but they have to change to support this use-case for
+other reasons, so this does not add any extra burden.
+
+# Alternatives
+[alternatives]: #alternatives
+
+Do nothing.
+
+Do only one part of this, instead of the whole thing.
+
+# Unresolved questions
+[unresolved]: #unresolved-questions
+
+How should the first and second editions of the book live in the same
+repository?
+
+What criteria should we use to accept new books?
+
+Should we adopt "learning Rust with too many Linked Lists"?