Re: [PATCH 2/9] docs: escape ** glob pattern in MAINTAINERS descriptions

Joe Perches
2026-05-05T03:20:03Z

On Mon, 2026-05-04 at 14:20 -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 5/4/26 8:51 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> From: Matteo Croce <[teknoraver@meta.com](mailto:teknoraver@meta.com)>
> >
> > Escape '**' in the MAINTAINERS descriptions section to prevent
> > reStructuredText from interpreting it as bold/strong inline markup,
> > which causes a warning when running 'make htmldocs'.
[]
> It's nice to eliminate one warning from 'make htmldocs', so this is good
> in that regard. However, there are still multiple problems (not Warnings)
> with '*' characters in the MAINTAINERS file:
>
> 1) F: */net/* all files in "any top level directory"/net
>
> In the html output, it shows "/net/" italicized (that's what one * does).
>
> 2) F: fs/**/*foo*.c all *foo*.c files in any subdirectory of fs
>
> In the html output, it shows
>
> F: fs/**/foo.c all foo.c files in any subdirectory of fs
>
> with both occurrences of "foo.c" italicized (dropping the '*' characters).
>
> These 2 examples are actively wrong.
>
> [adding new:]
> We would be better served by just putting file patterns inside ``fs/**/*foo*.c``
> quotation marks IMO.
>
> Ah, similar to what you do in the table output.
>
> Oh, with one little glitch:
> E.g., in the very first entry for 3C59X NETWORK DRIVER,
> F: Documentation/networking/device_drivers/ethernet/3com/vortex.rst
> F: drivers/net/ethernet/3com/3c59x.c
> it looks like automarkup is applied to the Documentation file so these
> 2 files are displayed as:
>
> networking/device_drivers/ethernet/3com/vortex, drivers/net/ethernet/3com/3c59x.c
>
> with the Doc file underlined and missing both Documentation and .rst.
> Or maybe that's what you intended since the automarkup link does work.
> It's just not what I expected. Oh well.

Please stop trying to format MAINTAINERS into rst.
It shouldn't be formatted.
It's simple text.