Overhaul of Adapter Development Contributing Docs

[dataders]

Description & motivation

1. cordon the adapter docs into a "Contributing" subsection
2. Add two new pages:
   1. a landing page for adapter development: "What Are Adapters?"
   2. a guide for publicizing and promoting a new adapter (written by the singular @jasnonaz)
3. lots of additional context, re-outlining, and code formatting.

Questions

1. should this new Contributing/Adapter_Development subsection live in Guides? @gwenwindflower
2. Does it make sense that clicking on the sidebar section heading "Adapter Development" brings up the first doc in the series: What are adapters?? Or, should it have an overview page with the "What are adapters?" page explicitly listed in the sidebar? Perhaps both? @gwenwindflower
3. Should maintaining your new adapter be a standalone page? What about Pre-Requisite Data Warehouse Features?
4. What information about adapter verification should go in this docs guide?

Preview

Direct link to preview adapter docs subsection:
https://deploy-preview-1727--docs-getdbt-com.netlify.app/docs/contributing/adapter-development/1-what-are-adapters

Checklist

If you added new pages (delete if not applicable):

• The page has been added to website/sidebars.js
• The new page has a unique filename

If you removed existing pages (delete if not applicable):

• The page has been removed from website/sidebars.js
• An entry has been added to _redirects

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[dataders]

annotating images incorrectly, hopefully this works

[jtcohen6]

You're a hero for putting this together. This will be such a huge improvement!

I gave an initial read-through and left a first round of feedback. To your specific questions:

1. should this new Contributing/Adapter_Development subsection live in Guides?

IMO it would make sense there, but since the Docs team is also planning a reorg of the site's IA, I don't think we need to pick its perfect home right now.

Does it make sense that clicking on the sidebar section heading "Adapter Development" brings up the first doc in the series: What are adapters?? Or, should it have an overview page with the "What are adapters?" page explicitly listed in the sidebar? Perhaps both?

I definitely like it when conceptual sections have a landing page that introduces the section, especially for a topic like this where there's such a clear reading sequence.

Should maintaining your new adapter be a standalone page? What about Pre-Requisite Data Warehouse Features?

The "Building a new adapter" page is long, so I definitely wouldn't complain if it were split up into more & shorter pages. For the two sections you called out, it feels like the split is: "Before you build [DWH prereqs]", "Building your adapter [initial scaffolding etc]", "After you've built [maintaining]"

What information about adapter verification should go in this docs guide?

I trust your judgment here. The audience for this page is people developing adapters. I think you hit the most important pieces here, which are:

• why get your adapter verified
• how to talk to us about next steps (CTA)

I imagine there's more work in a follow-up PR to actually update the "Available Adapters" / "Supported Data Platforms" page with information about which adapters are validated and what that means. The audience there will be any user of dbt, including very new ones, who want to know if they should start building a dbt project to run on X platform.

[dataders]

@matthewshaver @jtcohen6 thanks for your help here! I think we're almost there

I imagine there's more work in a follow-up PR to actually update the "Available Adapters" / "Supported Data Platforms" page with information about which adapters are validated and what that means. The audience there will be any user of dbt, including very new ones, who want to know if they should start building a dbt project to run on X platform.

See #1945 and a forthcoming PR where we combine the dbtlabs-, vendor-, and community-supported tables into one section with three new columns: "verified?" "latest verified version" and "maintained by"