> the documentation for a codebase should live in the same repository as the codebase itself
This! 100%. Emphasis - codebase documentation. Not user guides.
After doing this a couple times, it's a no brainer. The benefits are significant, the effort minimal. Just add a docs dir at the project root and go to town.
The docs dir has some very interesting stuff - how to run parts of the api locally, tricks to make auth bearable for local development, commands that get new team members going at hyperspeed, what parts talk to what parts, which files are important for what flows, why some refactoring was attempted but abandoned, high level limitations and benchmarks, history on how some monstrosity came to be with some jokes sprinkled about.
Comments
After doing this a couple times, it's a no brainer. The benefits are significant, the effort minimal. Just add a docs dir at the project root and go to town.
The docs dir has some very interesting stuff - how to run parts of the api locally, tricks to make auth bearable for local development, commands that get new team members going at hyperspeed, what parts talk to what parts, which files are important for what flows, why some refactoring was attempted but abandoned, high level limitations and benchmarks, history on how some monstrosity came to be with some jokes sprinkled about.
everything just one cmd+shift+f away.