linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 02/13] docs: enable Sphinx autodoc extension to allow documenting python

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Message-ID: <7ed33e37aab4971cc2762ffa5ff5602856857685@intel.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2026 14:18:45 +0200
From: Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@...ux.intel.com>
To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org>
Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org>, Jonathan Corbet
 <corbet@....net>, Linux Doc Mailing List <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...nel.org>,
 Shuah Khan <skhan@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/13] docs: enable Sphinx autodoc extension to allow
 documenting python

On Thu, 15 Jan 2026, Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 12:19:48PM +0200, Jani Nikula wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 Jan 2026, Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org> wrote:
>> > Adding python documentation is simple with Sphinx: all we need
>> > is to include the ext.autodoc extension and add the directories
>> > where the Python code sits at the sys.path.
>> >
>> > Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org>
>> > ---
>> >  Documentation/conf.py | 11 ++++++++---
>> >  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>> >
>> > diff --git a/Documentation/conf.py b/Documentation/conf.py
>> > index 1ea2ae5c6276..429fcc9fd7f7 100644
>> > --- a/Documentation/conf.py
>> > +++ b/Documentation/conf.py
>> > @@ -13,11 +13,18 @@ from  textwrap import dedent
>> >  
>> >  import sphinx
>> >  
>> > +# Location of Documentation/ directory
>> > +doctree = os.path.abspath(".")
>> 
>> Looking this up based on __file__ would be more robust than cwd.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> Calling this doctree is misleading because doctree is a specific Sphinx
>> term that means something else. The doctree directory is where the
>> parsed and pickled documents are cached.
>
> Yeah, you're right: better use a different name.
>
>> 
>> Oh, I see that you're just moving this, but this is something that
>> should be fixed first.
>
> It can also be changed afterwards. Anyway, this should be on another
> series, as such changes don't have anything to do with sphinx.ext.autodoc.
>
>> 
>> > +
>> >  # If extensions (or modules to document with autodoc) are in another directory,
>> >  # add these directories to sys.path here. If the directory is relative to the
>> >  # documentation root, use os.path.abspath to make it absolute, like shown here.
>> >  sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath("sphinx"))
>> >  
>> > +# Allow sphinx.ext.autodoc to document from tools and scripts
>> > +sys.path.append(f"{doctree}/../tools")
>> > +sys.path.append(f"{doctree}/../scripts")
>> 
>> These would be much nicer with pathlib.Path.
>
> I guess we agree to disagree here: patchlib basically overrides math divison 
> operator to work on patches like[1]
>
>     p = Path('/etc')
>     q = p / 'init.d' / 'reboot'
>
> This looks really weird on my eyes. I can't see why this would be better
> than:
>
>     q = "/etc/init.d/reboot"
>
> And yeah, I've seen examples in c++ that does similar things overriding 
> math operators to do something else. Never liked this kind of math operator
> abuse.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. ;)

The upside is everything's a Path object rather than a string, giving
you methods that you'd expect paths but not strings to have, avoiding
the tedious string manipulation all over the place.

BR,
Jani.


>
> [1] got from textbook example at https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html

-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel