Paying it Forward: Documenting your Open Hardware Module

We all know documentation is important, but oftentimes it's seen as either something to be done before a project starts -- in which case it's often outdated -- or after the project is complete -- at which point it's easily forgotten. This problem is especially difficult with hardware projects, which can be extremely obscure and dense. Professional chips generally come with a reference manual that describes the hardware. This manual is usually created by a dedicated staff that uses publishing tools and spreadsheets to create a final PDF file. As small open source developers we rarely have the resources to create these reference manuals by hand. This talk will cover `lxsocdoc`, and cover how we document the various peripherals inside projects such as Fomu and Betrusted, and provide motivation for treating documentation like code. We'll show why documenting as you go is both beneficial to your end users, as well as beneficial to yourself, and why an approach such as the one we take in `lxsocdoc` can help yourself today, not to mention your future self. Linux Australia: http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2020/room_7/Monday/Paying_it_Forward_Documenting_your_Open_Hardware_Module.webm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LumvbPLtgxw