Documenting new features

The best place to document Samba features is in the code itself, i.e. by writing great man-pages and samba-tool help. Writing a good WHATSNEW.txt description is also a great way to let existing Samba users know about a new feature. However, documenting new and updated features on the Samba wiki is also useful, and can be a helpful way for a new Samba user to work out what Samba can and cannot do.

Documenting user features

• There's a template to help you get started. Just create a new page and save it with the following content:

{{subst:NewFeature}}

Through the magic of mediawiki templating, this will create a skeleton page.

• Replace the <blah> markers in each section with your own content.
• Add [[Category:BLAH]] tags as appropriate, e.g. Category:Active Directory, Category:Printing, etc. For a list of possible categories, see Special:Categories.
• Link to the new page from appropriate places on the wiki, e.g. User Documentation.

Here's an example of what your finished page might look like.

This structure won't work in all cases, but try to use it as a guide so that wiki pages have a consistent look to users.

You may want to go into a lot more detail about the new feature, or have several different pages explaining different aspects of the feature. In which case, you could use the above template to provide a brief overview of the feature, and then simply link to the other pages to drill-down in more detail.

Documenting other work

The above template won't make so much sense if you're working on something that's not really user-facing, e.g. Python-3, WAF, selftest. However, if you've put in a lot of work on the changes, then it's still worth documenting it for other developers. Just use a free-form wiki page, but make sure to link to your new page from relevant places, e.g. Developer Documentation.