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

Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2019-04-16T14:33:27Z

Em Tue, 16 Apr 2019 08:00:24 -0600
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> escreveu:

> On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:28:52 -0400
> Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.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/

Just to mention, in the specific case of the device-mapper patch,
this is the result of those changes (after renaming the files to .rst,
and adding an index file):

https://www.infradead.org/~mchehab/rst_conversion/device-mapper/index.html

>
> 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,
>
> jon

Thanks,
Mauro