linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 10/57] docs: device-mapper: convert it to ReST format

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Message-ID: <20190416154858.GB22497@redhat.com>
Date:   Tue, 16 Apr 2019 11:48:59 -0400
From:   Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com>
To:     Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>
Cc:     Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@...nel.org>,
        Linux Doc Mailing List <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...radead.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Alasdair Kergon <agk@...hat.com>,
        dm-devel@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 10/57] docs: device-mapper: convert it to ReST format

On Tue, Apr 16 2019 at 10:00am -0400,
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net> wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:28:52 -0400
> Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Can you help me understand why this is the direction text based
> > Documenation is taking in the Linux kernel?  All I see is markup, and
> > escaping of characters, that is a chore to administer over time.
> 
> This is a discussion that was mostly resolved some years ago...
> 
> Classic Documentation/ is a jumbled collection of unorganized text files,
> some of which contain highly useful information and others of which
> haven't had much to offer since about 1996.  We are working to turn it
> into an organized collection where, hopefully, some thought has actually
> been given to the people who will be reading it.
> 
> The ReST conversion, in particular, allows us to link documents into a
> larger structure, create indexes and cross references, and produce output
> in formats like HTML and PDF.  It lets us present the documentation like
> this:
> 
> 	https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
> 
> Among other things, making the documentation more accessible in this way
> makes it easier and more rewarding for developers to improve it, and I
> believe we are seeing the results of that.  Linus called out the
> documentation work in the 5.1-rc1 announcement, for example.
> 
> Nobody has complained about the maintenance burden of RST docs - so far as
> I have heard, anyway.  Things do break occasionally, but problems in the
> docs build almost always result from code changes that mess up the
> kerneldoc comments rather than RST changes, and it's been that way for as
> long as I've been paying attention.

Thanks for the context.  I clearly just haven't followed the evolution.
Certainly looks like a solid improvement.

Think the last piece I'm missing is: how does one edit a .rst document
without having to know to sprinkle syntactic sugar around?  Does emacs
have a ReST mode?  If not what client interface are people using to
properly change these documents?

(apologies if this is all spelled out nicely in Documentation/
somewhere, but please help this man learn to fish).

Thanks,
Mike