Feature request : add a description field in `process`

[lindenb]

New feature

Hi it would be cool to have a place to put a short/long description of each process , so we can have a human description of each step in the directed graph. Something like the *.yml files in the module files the nf-core project

Use case

process SAMTOOLS_FAIDX {
shortDescription = "index a reference genome"
(...)
}
description = "index a reference genome, creates a .fai file that can be used to quickly retrieve sequences"
(...)
}

Suggested implementation

see above

[bentsherman]

If you write a Javadoc comment above the process, it will be shown in hover hints by the language server:

/**
 * index a reference genome, creates a .fai file that can be used to quickly retrieve sequences
 */
process SAMTOOLS_FAIDX {
  // ...
}

We've been discussing the meta.yml recently because we are interested in supporting it natively somehow

Right now our thinking is to use the process definition to generate the tedious bits of metadata like inputs and outputs, while leaving the user to fill in the rest manually. The description could come from Javadoc comments as shown above

But we don't really want to put all of this metadata in the code because it will make the process definition very long

[bentsherman]

Closing as not planned since we have the Javadoc support and we will focus on developing a module spec instead