Re: kernel-doc and xen.git

[Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2020, George Dunlap wrote:
> > On Jul 31, 2020, at 12:29 PM, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > On 30.07.2020 03:27, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> I would like to ask for your feedback on the adoption of the kernel-doc
> >> format for in-code comments.
> >> 
> >> In the FuSa SIG we have started looking into FuSa documents for Xen. One
> >> of the things we are investigating are ways to link these documents to
> >> in-code comments in xen.git and vice versa.
> >> 
> >> In this context, Andrew Cooper suggested to have a look at "kernel-doc"
> >> [1] during one of the virtual beer sessions at the last Xen Summit.
> >> 
> >> I did give a look at kernel-doc and it is very promising. kernel-doc is
> >> a script that can generate nice rst text documents from in-code
> >> comments. (The generated rst files can then be used as input for sphinx
> >> to generate html docs.) The comment syntax [2] is simple and similar to
> >> Doxygen:
> >> 
> >>    /**
> >>     * function_name() - Brief description of function.
> >>     * @arg1: Describe the first argument.
> >>     * @arg2: Describe the second argument.
> >>     *        One can provide multiple line descriptions
> >>     *        for arguments.
> >>     */
> >> 
> >> kernel-doc is actually better than Doxygen because it is a much simpler
> >> tool, one we could customize to our needs and with predictable output.
> >> Specifically, we could add the tagging, numbering, and referencing
> >> required by FuSa requirement documents.
> >> 
> >> I would like your feedback on whether it would be good to start
> >> converting xen.git in-code comments to the kernel-doc format so that
> >> proper documents can be generated out of them. One day we could import
> >> kernel-doc into xen.git/scripts and use it to generate a set of html
> >> documents via sphinx.
> > 
> > How far is this intended to go? The example is description of a
> > function's parameters, which is definitely fine (albeit I wonder
> > if there's a hidden implication then that _all_ functions
> > whatsoever are supposed to gain such comments). But the text just
> > says much more generally "in-code comments", which could mean all
> > of them. I'd consider the latter as likely going too far.
> 
> I took him to mean comments in the code at the moment, which describe some 
> interface, but aren’t in kernel-doc format.  Naturally we wouldn’t want *all* 
> comments to be stuffed into a document somewhere.

+1