linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 0/1] Compactly make code examples into literal blocks

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Message-ID: <20200327104126.667b5d5b@lwn.net>
Date:   Fri, 27 Mar 2020 10:41:26 -0600
From:   Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>
To:     Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@...ux.intel.com>
Cc:     peter@...eshed.quignogs.org.uk,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@...nel.org>, linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/1] Compactly make code examples into literal blocks

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:28:54 +0200
Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@...ux.intel.com> wrote:

> IMHO the real problem is kernel-doc doing too much preprocessing on the
> input, preventing us from doing what would be the sensible thing in
> rst. The more we try to fix the problem by adding more kernel-doc
> processing, the further we dig ourselves into this hole.
> 
> If kernel-doc didn't have its own notion of section headers, such as
> "example:", we wouldn't have this problem to begin with. We could just
> use the usual rst construct; "example::" followed by an indented block.
> 
> I'm not going to stand in the way of the patch, but I'm telling you,
> this is going to get harder, not easier, on this path.

I agree with you in principle.  The problem, of course, is that this is a
legacy gift from before the RST days and it will be hard to change.

A quick grep shows that the pattern:

	* Example:

appears nearly 100 times in current kernels.  It is not inconceivable to
make a push to get rid of all of those, turning them into ordinary RST
syntax - especially since not all of those are actually kerneldoc
comments.

The same quick grep says that "returns?:" appears about 10,000 times.
*That* will be painful to change, and I can only imagine that some
resistance would have to be overcome at some point.

So what do folks think we should do? :)

I want to ponder on this for a bit.  Peter, that may mean that I hold this
patch past the 5.7 merge window, which perhaps makes sense at this point
anyway, sorry.  But I really would like to push things into a direction
that moves us away from gnarly perl hacks and toward something more
maintainable in the long term.

Thanks,

jon