Re: kernel-doc and xen.git

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

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.

Jan