Re: [PATCH 1/2] Docs: An initial automarkup extension for sphinx

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>]

Em Thu, 25 Apr 2019 14:01:24 -0600
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> escreveu:

> Rather than fill our text files with :c:func:`function()` syntax, just do
> the markup via a hook into the sphinx build process.  As is always the
> case, the real problem is detecting the situations where this markup should
> *not* be done.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
> ---
>  Documentation/conf.py              |  3 +-
>  Documentation/sphinx/automarkup.py | 90 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 92 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/sphinx/automarkup.py
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/conf.py b/Documentation/conf.py
> index 72647a38b5c2..ba7b2846b1c5 100644
> --- a/Documentation/conf.py
> +++ b/Documentation/conf.py
> @@ -34,7 +34,8 @@ needs_sphinx = '1.3'
>  # Add any Sphinx extension module names here, as strings. They can be
>  # extensions coming with Sphinx (named 'sphinx.ext.*') or your custom
>  # ones.
> -extensions = ['kerneldoc', 'rstFlatTable', 'kernel_include', 'cdomain', 'kfigure', 'sphinx.ext.ifconfig']
> +extensions = ['kerneldoc', 'rstFlatTable', 'kernel_include', 'cdomain',
> +              'kfigure', 'sphinx.ext.ifconfig', 'automarkup']
>  
>  # The name of the math extension changed on Sphinx 1.4
>  if major == 1 and minor > 3:
> diff --git a/Documentation/sphinx/automarkup.py b/Documentation/sphinx/automarkup.py
> new file mode 100644
> index 000000000000..c47469372bae
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/Documentation/sphinx/automarkup.py
> @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
> +# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> +#
> +# This is a little Sphinx extension that tries to apply certain kinds
> +# of markup automatically so we can keep it out of the text files
> +# themselves.
> +#
> +# It's possible that this could be done better by hooking into the build
> +# much later and traversing through the doctree.  That would eliminate the
> +# need to duplicate some RST parsing and perhaps be less fragile, at the
> +# cost of some more complexity and the need to generate the cross-reference
> +# links ourselves.
> +#
> +# Copyright 2019 Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
> +#
> +from __future__ import print_function
> +import re
> +import sphinx
> +
> +#
> +# Regex nastiness.  Of course.
> +# Try to identify "function()" that's not already marked up some
> +# other way.  Sphinx doesn't like a lot of stuff right after a
> +# :c:func: block (i.e. ":c:func:`mmap()`s" flakes out), so the last
> +# bit tries to restrict matches to things that won't create trouble.
> +#
> +RE_function = re.compile(r'(^|\s+)([\w\d_]+\(\))([.,/\s]|$)')

IMHO, this looks good enough to avoid trouble, maybe except if one
wants to write a document explaining this functionality at the
doc-guide/kernel-doc.rst.

Anyway, the way it is written, we could still explain it by adding
a "\ " after the func, e. g.:

	When you write a function like: func()\ , the automarkup
	extension will automatically convert it into:
	``:c:func:`func()```.

So, this looks OK on my eyes.

> +#
> +# Lines consisting of a single underline character.
> +#
> +RE_underline = re.compile(r'^([-=~])\1+$')

Hmm... why are you calling this "underline"? Sounds a bad name to me,
as it took me a while to understand what you meant.

From the code I'm inferring that this is meant to track 3 of the
possible symbols used as a (sub).*title markup. On several places 
we use other symbols:'^', '~', '.', '*' (and others) as sub-sub(sub..)
title markups.

I would instead define this Regex as:

	RE_title_markup = re.compile(r'^([^\w\d])\1+$')

You should probably need another regex for the title itself:

	RE_possible_title = re.compile(r'^(\S.*\S)\s*$')

in order to get the size of the matched line. Doing a doing len(previous)
will get you false positives.

As on Sphinx, **all** titles should start at the first column,
or it will produce a severe error[1], we can use such regex to
minimize parsing errors.

[1] and either crash or keep running some endless loop internally.
Not being bad enough, it will also invalidate all the previously
cached data, losing a lot of time next time you try to build the
docs.

---

on a separate matter (but related to automarkup matter - and to what
I would name underline), as a future feature, perhaps we could also add
a parser for:

	_something that requires underlines_

Underlined text is probably the only feature that we use on several docs
with Sphinx doesn't support (there are some extensions for that - I guess,
but it sounds simple enough to have a parser here).

This can be tricky to get it right, as just underlines_ is a
cross reference markup - so, I would only add this after we improve the
script to come after Sphinx own markup processing.

---

> +#
> +# Starting a literal block.
> +#
> +RE_literal = re.compile(r'^(\s*)(.*::\s*|\.\.\s+code-block::.*)$')
> +#
> +# Just get the white space beginning a line.
> +#
> +RE_whitesp = re.compile(r'^(\s*)')
> +
> +def MangleFile(app, docname, text):
> +    ret = [ ]
> +    previous = ''
> +    literal = False
> +    for line in text[0].split('\n'):
> +        #
> +        # See if we might be ending a literal block, as denoted by
> +        # an indent no greater than when we started.
> +        #
> +        if literal and len(line) > 0:
> +            m = RE_whitesp.match(line)  # Should always match
> +            if len(m.group(1).expandtabs()) <= lit_indent:
> +                literal = False
> +        #
> +        # Blank lines, directives, and lines within literal blocks
> +        # should not be messed with.
> +        #
> +        if literal or len(line) == 0 or line[0] == '.':
> +            ret.append(line)


> +        #
> +        # Is this an underline line?  If so, and it is the same length
> +        # as the previous line, we may have mangled a heading line in
> +        # error, so undo it.
> +        #
> +        elif RE_underline.match(line):
> +            if len(line) == len(previous):

No, that doesn't seem enough. I would, instead, use the regex I
proposed before, in order to check if the previous line starts with
a non-space, and getting the length only up to the last non-space
(yeah, unfortunately, we have some text files that have extra blank
spaces at line's tail).

> +                ret[-1] = previous
> +            ret.append(line)
> +        #
> +        # Normal line - perform substitutions.
> +        #
> +        else:
> +            ret.append(RE_function.sub(r'\1:c:func:`\2`\3', line))
> +        #
> +        # Might we be starting a literal block?  If so make note of
> +        # the fact.
> +        #
> +        m = RE_literal.match(line)
> +        if m:
> +            literal = True
> +            lit_indent = len(m.group(1).expandtabs())
> +        previous = line
> +    text[0] = '\n'.join(ret)
> +
> +def setup(app):
> +    app.connect('source-read', MangleFile)
> +
> +    return dict(
> +        parallel_read_safe = True,
> +        parallel_write_safe = True
> +    )

The remaining looks fine to me - although I'm not a Sphinx-extension
expert, and my knowledge of python is far from being perfect.

Thanks,
Mauro