GSoD 2021

Google Season of Docs 2021 is kick-started with all the joy and enthusiasm. Firstly, I have to setup Google Analytics for the PCP documentation (developed during GSoD 2020). After the Google Anaytics is setup, I started with the documentation of the new 'How To' Guides. The How To Guides will assist new users in engaging immediately, by clearly showing how to solve specific problem scenarios that users encounter frequently.

The first step towards the How To guides is to make a basic skeleton for this guide. I followed the same approach as last year - I made a new section in the main landing page of the PCP documentation naming it as 'Quick Guides'. After that, I started making sepaate files for all the new upcoming chapters. The same consistency was introduced for these new guides. They are having sasme location, format and look-and-feel as the existing PCP documentation have. Once the setup for the new guides is done - I was ready for the documentation part.

Now, I started with the documentation of the Quick Guides. Writing documentation for the Quick Guides was not an easy task. It involved a lot of research and hands-on on the PCP tools. But, I succeeded in writing documentation for all of them. There were nine such new quick guides. It includes -
1. List the available performance metrics?
2. Add new metrics to the available set?
3. Record metrics on my local system?
4. Record metrics from a remote system?
5. Graph a performance metric?
6. Automate performance problem detection?
7. Setup automated rules to write to the system log?
8. Record historical values for use with the pcp-dstat tool?
9. Export metric values in a comma-separated format?

After the documentation of new quick guides is done - I started with the Short Guides. Documentation of short guides involved two things - auditing of the existing Short Guides documentation and converting them into How Do I form. So, I started auditing the documentation. I learnt a lot about the PCP tools during this phase. Once it is done - I started converting them into How Do I form. There were ten such Short Guides -
1. Using Charts
2. Logging Basics
3. Automated Reasoning Basics
4. Configuring Automated Reasoning
5. Analysis of Linux Containers
6. Secure Connections
7. Secure Client Connections
8. Authenticated Connections
9. Importing data and creating PCP archives (C, Perl, Python)
10. Using 3D Views (experimental, source only)

Once the documentation is done, I opened the PRs and after the review from my mentor - Nathan Scott, the PRs were merged into the existing PCP documentation and the new documentation 'Quick Guides' were hosted on readthedocs (rtd) site.

After the documentation, I have to give a list for additional topics beyond the set above to produce an initial set of high-value guides and also, provided feedback to developers about potential areas of improvements in the tools to create more satisfying early user experiences. Also, after the hosting of the documentation - I did some cosmetic changes as per the feedbacks from the mentors.

While the entire project was challenging, some areas were unexpected and far more difficult. But, with the help of my mentor, Nathan Scott, I was able to conquer all of the obstacles with ease. I was able to improve my technical documentation skills by participating in the Google Season of Docs with Performance Co-Pilot. Working on this project taught me a lot about how to create documentation.

So, in the end, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my mentor - Nathan Scott for his constant support and guidance. He was always around and had solutions to any issue that I faced. He is gem of a person. I would also like to thank Christian Horn and Apurva Bhide for their guidance. I am grateful to Google and Performance Co-Pilot organization for giving me this golden opportunity again this year..