streamline node contribution

[jackparmer]

@Angchau and @smahmed776 have noted that the node contribution workflow can likely be simplified with CI to only involve this repo (eg not requiring that contributors touch the studio repo, also)

[jackparmer]

cc @scorinaldi ☝️

[scorinaldi]

hey @Angchau and @jackparmer -- Here's one option for keeping the /nodes and /docs repo in sync with minimal PRs. What do you think?

When a change is committed to /nodes repo main branch we could have a process that:
* grabs the latest main branch /nodes repo,
* autogenerates all the node documentation code,
* then creates a PR with this new doc code in the /docs repo
* requests a review from whoever has the latest main commit

Folks could kick off this docs syncing process while developing too, just to see what the new docs would look like

[Angchau]

Hello, Yes this is a great idea. The goal is to autogenerate the files in the docs such as docstring.txt , parameters.yaml, python_code.txt directly from the nodes repo. Also, the other main thing would be to update the Manifest from the studio repo directly, because for the moment, after creating the new nodes, you need to modify the COMMAND_MANIFEST in Studio and hence have a PR in Studio. If we can have only a PR on Nodes repo for developing new nodes it would be awesome

[Angchau]

One other thing, when a new contributor is creating a custom node, we could ask him to create an example app for his node and describe it, because we also need that for the documentation. In this case, I don't know if it's better to do that in the nodes repo and then generate files like (app.txt, output.txt, and example.md) in the doc repo or if we ask him to do it directly in the Docs repo. In my opinion, it would be ok to have one PR in Nodes and one PR in the docs. The PR we want to remove is the one in Studio. Let's see what @jackparmer says

[jackparmer]

one PR in Nodes and one PR in the docs

yeah, I think that this would be the holy grail 💯

it would still be nice to have a python routine that would autogenerate the first part of the docs (the part that goes in node's autogen folder)

but the rest of the docs that are written "by hand" would need their own separate PR for sure

[jackparmer]

we could even go a step further by automatically updating the node's parameters manifest by defining the parameters in the node docstring with the numpy docstring paramters convention:

https://python.plainenglish.io/how-to-write-numpy-style-docstrings-a092121403ba

so then, silghtly modifying what Sharif layed out:

when a change is committed to /nodes repo main branch we could have a process that:

• grabs the latest main branch /nodes repo,
• [NEW] reads the new node(s) docstring and updates the parameter manifest
• autogenerates all the node documentation code,
• then creates a PR with this new doc code in the /docs repo
• [NEW] creates a PR to update https://github.com/flojoy-io/studio/blob/main/src/feature/flow_chart_panel/manifest/COMMANDS_MANIFEST.ts in the /studio repo
• requests a review from whoever has the latest main commit

[scorinaldi]

Hey folks, I put together a work in progress doc that is trying to pull together all the ideas into one place. Please have a look @jackparmer @Angchau @smahmed776 : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HZBQXEunksCMSgvzbCnWq607p-9cjFTdAWVDfS1yY7I/edit#

[jackparmer]

can u make it public?

[scorinaldi]

My bad! Try now, should be public