diff --git a/src/cargo/util/config/de.rs b/src/cargo/util/config/de.rs
index 75653c0e447..4471727db0c 100644
--- a/src/cargo/util/config/de.rs
+++ b/src/cargo/util/config/de.rs
@@ -112,6 +112,10 @@ impl<'de, 'config> de::Deserializer<'de> for Deserializer<'config> {
     where
         V: de::Visitor<'de>,
     {
+        // Match on the magical struct name/field names that are passed in to
+        // detect when we're deserializing `Value<T>`.
+        //
+        // See more comments in `value.rs` for the protocol used here.
         if name == value::NAME && fields == value::FIELDS {
             return visitor.visit_map(ValueDeserializer { hits: 0, de: self });
         }
@@ -340,6 +344,13 @@ impl<'de> de::SeqAccess<'de> for ConfigSeqAccess {
     }
 }
 
+/// This is a deserializer that deserializes into a `Value<T>` for
+/// configuration.
+///
+/// This is a special deserializer because it deserializes one of its struct
+/// fields into the location that this configuration value was defined in.
+///
+/// See more comments in `value.rs` for the protocol used here.
 struct ValueDeserializer<'config> {
     hits: u32,
     de: Deserializer<'config>,
@@ -396,6 +407,9 @@ impl<'de, 'config> de::MapAccess<'de> for ValueDeserializer<'config> {
     }
 }
 
+/// A deserializer which takes two values and deserializes into a tuple of those
+/// two values. This is similar to types like `StrDeserializer` in upstream
+/// serde itself.
 struct Tuple2Deserializer<T, U>(T, U);
 
 impl<'de, T, U> de::Deserializer<'de> for Tuple2Deserializer<T, U>
diff --git a/src/cargo/util/config/value.rs b/src/cargo/util/config/value.rs
index 893360baa56..0a428046259 100644
--- a/src/cargo/util/config/value.rs
+++ b/src/cargo/util/config/value.rs
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+//! Deserialization of a `Value<T>` type which tracks where it was deserialized
+//! from.
+//!
+//! Often Cargo wants to report semantic error information or other sorts of
+//! error information about configuration keys but it also may wish to indicate
+//! as an error context where the key was defined as well (to help user
+//! debugging). The `Value<T>` type here can be used to deserialize a `T` value
+//! from configuration, but also record where it was deserialized from when it
+//! was read.
+
 use crate::util::config::Config;
 use serde::de;
 use std::fmt;
@@ -5,14 +15,37 @@ use std::marker;
 use std::mem;
 use std::path::{Path, PathBuf};
 
+/// A type which can be deserialized as a configuration value which records
+/// where it was deserialized from.
 #[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Clone)]
 pub struct Value<T> {
+    /// The inner value that was deserialized.
     pub val: T,
+    /// The location where `val` was defined in configuration (e.g. file it was
+    /// defined in, env var etc).
     pub definition: Definition,
 }
 
 pub type OptValue<T> = Option<Value<T>>;
 
+// Deserializing `Value<T>` is pretty special, and serde doesn't have built-in
+// support for this operation. To implement this we extend serde's "data model"
+// a bit. We configure deserialization of `Value<T>` to basically only work with
+// our one deserializer using configuration.
+//
+// We define that `Value<T>` deserialization asks the deserializer for a very
+// special struct name and struct field names. In doing so the deserializer will
+// recognize this and synthesize a magical value for the `definition` field when
+// we deserialize it. This protocol is how we're able to have a channel of
+// information flowing from the configuration deserializer into the
+// deserialization implementation here.
+//
+// You'll want to also check out the implementation of `ValueDeserializer` in
+// `de.rs`. Also note that the names below are intended to be invalid Rust
+// identifiers to avoid how they might conflict with other valid structures.
+// Finally the `definition` field is transmitted as a tuple of i32/string, which
+// is effectively a tagged union of `Definition` itself.
+
 pub(crate) const VALUE_FIELD: &str = "$__cargo_private_value";
 pub(crate) const DEFINITION_FIELD: &str = "$__cargo_private_definition";
 pub(crate) const NAME: &str = "$__cargo_private_Value";