Re: Passing SPHINXOPTS is broken

[Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com>]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2026, Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:06:51 +0200
> Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 23 Jan 2026, Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
>> > I was trying to get the regular sphinx-build output.
>
> Just do:
>
> 	$ make V=1 htmldocs
>
> or:
> 	$ ./tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper -v htmldocs
>
>> > The monster sphinx-build-wrapper thing has this obnoxious and complex
>> > logic of forcing -q unless you specify verbose in SPHINXOPTS. You'd
>> > think those defaults should be specified in the Makefile. But no.
>
> It is like there to mimic what we used to have at Makefile.
>
>> > Anyway, setting SPHINXOPTS in the environment or on the make
>> > command-line doesn't work, because Documentation/Makefile overrides it
>> > to empty.  
>> 
>> Oh, it's more sad than just this. There is no way to use SPHINXOPTS to
>> get sphinx-build to produce the regular non-quiet output (that the
>> wrapper calls verbose).
>>
>> You have to use KBUILD_VERBOSE to make the damn wrapper not pass -q to
>> sphinx-build. 
>
> KBUILD_VERBOSE is the Makefile's env var that handles V=1.
>
>>The wrapper appends the -q overwriting anything the user
>> might want to pass on SPHINXOPTS. Which can't be passed anyway because
>> the Makefile overwrites it.
>
> It is like there to mimic what we used to have at Makefile: it was
> was always passing "-q", except when called with V=1.

I don't want verbose output from e.g. kernel-doc saying "Scanning doc
for function" bla bla blaa, but I do want the regular Sphinx messages on
what phase of the build it's at.

There doesn't seem to be a way to get the regular Sphinx "not quiet, not
verbose" output, without also going verbose on silly kernel-doc
messages.


BR,
Jani.

-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel