# A suggestion for package maintainers

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-suggestion-for-package-maintainers/44111>\
**Category:** Community\
**Tags:** package, suggestions\
**Created:** [August 1, 2020, 11:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-suggestion-for-package-maintainers/44111 "2020-08-01T23:10:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anon37204545](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@anon37204545](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon37204545)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2020, 11:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-suggestion-for-package-maintainers/44111/1 "2020-08-01T23:10:41Z")

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If your Julia package has any form of online documentation (e.g. docs generated by Documenter.jl), please please put the link to it in the repository’s description. For example, just like in the [Documenter.jl](https://github.com/JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl/) repository itself.

Here are some of the benefits:

1. A curious Julia user wouldn’t have to scroll (a lot!) to reach a useful link (it can be painful on a large display, let alone on the mobile device). Links to docs are often not on the top of the Readme, but hidden somewhere deep in the layers of headings. That makes things even more difficult.

2. People who are just exploring Julia’s ecosystem and aren’t aware of Documenter, stable/latest docs and how to find them, would just get lost without a very visible link. They are presented with undecipherable source code, and (apparently) no documentation for it. They will probably just close the tab and search for something else.

3. It’s good for marketing. A repository with a (docs) website is automatically percieved as more mature.

I opened an issue related to this in some repositories, and the maintainers unanimously accepted the suggestion. But I hope more will follow the trend without me opening more issues. 😄

Bonus: is making a full-blown documentation too hard and time consuming? You can skip that and just make a nice web page with [PkgPage.jl](https://github.com/tlienart/PkgPage.jl) in under 10 minutes.

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**Author:** ![tbeason](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tbeason/32/15898_2.png) [@tbeason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tbeason)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2020, 11:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-suggestion-for-package-maintainers/44111/2 "2020-08-01T23:17:54Z")

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I’ll second this, and its reverse… 😉

> [@Plea to package developers regarding documentation!](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plea-to-package-developers-regarding-documentation/37473):
>
> Very serious topic ahead: Please please please can package developers put a link BACK to the source repo inside your documentation! Without it, the documentation becomes a trap. Randomly selected example: [StatsBase.jl Documentation · StatsBase.jl](https://juliastats.org/StatsBase.jl/stable/) It is becoming more common now that Google is taking me to documentation pages rather than the Github repo. I frequently flip back and forth between code and documentation, but this process is beyond cumbersome if the documentation contains no easily…

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**Author:** ![kevbonham](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kevbonham/32/216165_2.png) [@kevbonham](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kevbonham)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 12:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-suggestion-for-package-maintainers/44111/3 "2020-08-02T00:59:10Z")

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> [@tbeason](#):
>
> I’ll second this, and its reverse… 😉

Yeah, I really think this should be a Documenter default. There’s an issue open somewhere I think.