Re: [PATCH v5 01/15] docs: conf.py: properly handle include and exclude patterns

Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2025-06-18T11:45:05Z

Hi Akira,

Em Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:42:14 +0900
Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com> escreveu:

> Hi Mauro,
>
> A comment on compatibility with earlier Sphinx.
>
> On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 10:01:58 +0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > When one does:
> > make SPHINXDIRS="foo" htmldocs
> >
> > All patterns would be relative to Documentation/foo, which
> > causes the include/exclude patterns like:
> >
> > include_patterns = [
> > ...
> > f'foo/*.{ext}',
> > ]
> >
> > to break. This is not what it is expected. Address it by
> > adding a logic to dynamically adjust the pattern when
> > SPHINXDIRS is used.
> >
> > That allows adding parsers for other file types.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
> > ---
> > Documentation/conf.py | 52 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
> > 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/conf.py b/Documentation/conf.py
> > index 12de52a2b17e..e887c1b786a4 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/conf.py
> > +++ b/Documentation/conf.py
> > @@ -17,6 +17,54 @@ import os
> > import sphinx
> > import shutil
> >
> > +# Location of Documentation/ directory
> > +doctree = os.path.abspath('.')
> > +
> > +# List of patterns that don't contain directory names, in glob format.
> > +include_patterns = ['**.rst']
> > +exclude_patterns = []
> > +
>
> Where "exclude_patterns" has been with us ever since Sphinx 1.0,
> "include_patterns" was added fairly recently in Sphinx 5.1 [1].
>
> [1]: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/configuration.html#confval-include_patterns
>
> So, this breaks earlier Sphinx versions.

Heh, testing against old versions is harder with python 3.13 (Fedora
42 default), as one library used by older Sphinx versions were dropped.

I found a way to make it backward compatible up to 3.4.3, with a
backward-compatible logic at conf.py. I'll send the new version in a few.

> Also, after applying all of v5 on top of docs-next, I see these new
> warnings with Sphinx 7.2.6 (of Ubuntu 24.04):
>
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/ca.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/cec.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/dmx.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/frontend.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/lirc.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/media.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/net.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree
> /<srcdir>/Documentation/output/videodev2.h.rst: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree

We should likely use a Sphinx extension for those as well. Building those
are also made via some Makefile tricks that predates the time we start
adding our own extensions at the tree.

> Sphinx 7.3.7 and later are free of them. I have no idea which change in
> Sphinx 7.3 got rid of them.
>
> Now that the parallel build performance regression has be resolved in
> Sphinx 7.4, I don't think there is much demand for keeping Sphinx versions
> compatible.
> These build errors and extra warnings would encourage people to upgrade
> there Sphinx. So I'm not going to nack this.
>
> Of course, getting rid of above warnings with < Sphinx 7.3 would be ideal.

I'm all for using newer versions, but we need to check what LTS distros
are using those days.

On my machine, with -jauto, 3.4.3 is taking 11 minutes to build, which
is twice the time of 8.2.3. IMO, this is a very good reason for people
stop using legacy versions when possible :-)

Regards,
Mauro