From 6be3c1fad01744beae74f5753685a4e5a936bf54 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Daniil Baturin <daniil@baturin.org>
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2018 23:15:59 +0200
Subject: Improve the readme.

---
 README.md | 51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

(limited to 'README.md')

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 8ef89c5db..665512c45 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,10 +1,55 @@
-# vyos-1x
+# vyos-1x: VyOS 1.2.0+ configuration scripts and data
 
 [![Coverage](https://sonarcloud.io/api/project_badges/measure?project=vyos%3Avyos-1x&metric=coverage)](https://sonarcloud.io/component_measures?id=vyos%3Avyos-1x&metric=coverage)
 
-VyOS 1.2.0+ configuration scripts and data
+VyOS 1.1.x had its codebase split into way too many submodules for no good reason, which made it hard
+to navigate or write meaningful changelogs. As the code undergoes rewrite in the new style in VyOS 1.2.0+,
+we consolidate the rewritten code in this package.
 
-# Test
+If you just want to build a VyOS image, the repository you want is [vyos-build](https://github.com/vyos/vyos-build).
+If you also want to contribute to VyOS, read on.
+
+## Package layout
+
+```
+interface-definitions  # Configuration interface (i.e. conf mode command) definitions
+op-mode-definitions    # Operational command definitions
+src
+    conf_mode/  # Configuration mode scripts
+    op_mode/    # Operational mode scripts
+    completion/ # Completion helpers
+    validators/ # Value validators
+    helpers/    # Misc helpers
+    migration-scripts # Migration scripts
+    tests/      # Unit tests
+
+python/  # Python modules
+
+scripts/ # Build-time scripts
+schema/  # XML schemas
+```
+
+## Interface/command definitions
+
+Raw node.def files for the old backend are no longer written by hand or generated by custom sciprts.
+They are all now produced from a unified XML format that supports a strict subset of the old backend
+features. In particular, it intentionally does not support embedded shell scripts, default values,
+and value "types", instead delegating those tasks to external scripts.
+
+Configuration interface definitions must conform to the schema found in schema/interface_definition.rng
+and operational command definitions must conform to schema/op-mode-definition.rng
+Schema checks are performed at build time, so a package with malformed interface definitions will not build.
+
+## Configuration scripts
+
+The guidelines in a nutshell:
+
+* Use separate functions for retrieving configuration data, validating it, and generating taret config
+* Use a template processor when the format is more complex than just one line (jinja2 and pystache are acceptable options) 
+
+## Tests
+
+Tests are executed at build time, you can also execute them by hand with:
 
 ```
 make test
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