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I've been wanting (and, off and on, building) a system for tying documentation to supporting tests. On the one hand, it should serve as citations, making sure I don't make claims I can't hold up. On the other, it should help avoid the docs drifting out of sync with the code without undue cognitive overhead - telling me what I need to consider changing when the code changes.

One option would be to start with a spec and gradually add citations, doing TDD along the way for a sort of Documentation Driven Development, although I've no particular confidence that's actually a sweet spot.

doctest is a move in this direction, but only really makes sense for code you wish to surface as examples. Cucumber is also obviously related, but - so far as I understand - isn't really suitable for producing arbitrary documentation. Types are (amongst other things) another form of machine checked documentation, but the audience (and, usually, expressiveness) is naturally limited.



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