[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Laurent Pinchart]

On Monday 04 August 2014 09:30:04 Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 02:58:21PM +0200, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > On Thursday 31 July 2014 15:16:21 Randy Dunlap wrote:
> >> On 05/12/14 11:04, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> >>> On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>  On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> > If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source
> > code then I believe we'll have to create our own format, as
> > creating a properties table from kerneldoc information extracted
> > from comments is probably not possible.
>  
>  Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be
>  done?
>  
>  The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to
>  force people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding
>  properties. Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care
>  so much at this point. The fact that it's a central place should
>  mandate that the patches changing it will go through dri-devel
>  and so everyone should se them, and when adding new properties it
>  would make the patch author more likely to look around a bit
>  before adding another slighty incompatible version of the same
>  property. If someone has a better suggestion how to encforce this
>  I'm all ears.
>  
>  Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer
>  merges stuff without checking for violations of this policy.
>  Dave, any thoughts on the subject?
> >>> 
> >>> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new 
> >>> properties when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
> >>> 
> >>> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> >>> really Intel I have to worry about so far,
> >> 
> >> I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
> >> updates for the prop docs.
> >> 
> >>> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist
> >>> as well.
> >>> 
> >>> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> >>> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing
> >>> to merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or
> >>> two before I burn it.
> >> 
> >> Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list
> >> and maybe find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
> > 
> > I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
> > There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for
> > kernel-doc (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that
> > effort.
>  
>  Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...
> >>> 
> >>> I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits
> >>> for them.
> >>> 
>  Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few
>  months I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook
>  (all pulled in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter
>  structure). DOC: sections are really useful to pull all the actual
>  documentation out of the docbook xml into kerneldoc.
>  
>  But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
>  gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:
>  
>  - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
>    especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether
>    it's
> >>> 
> >>> Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so
> >>> far.
> >>> 
>    markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable
>    plain text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing
>    docbook xml paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.
>  
>  - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g.
>    function() or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc
>    automatically inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation
>    page across the entire project. Really powerful and makes overview
>    sections much more useful entry points for beginners since they can
>    easily jump back betweeen the high-level overview and low-
>    level per-function documentation.
> >>> 
> >>> That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.
> >>> 
>  - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
>    structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
>    large structures with lots of comments this would bring the
>    kerneldoc and struct member much closer together.
>  
>  So that's 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 02:58:21PM +0200, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Randy,
> 
> On Thursday 31 July 2014 15:16:21 Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > On 05/12/14 11:04, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > > On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > >>> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >  On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> > >>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code
> > >>> then I believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a
> > >>> properties table from kerneldoc information extracted from comments
> > >>> is probably not possible.
> > >> 
> > >> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be
> > >> done?
> > >> 
> > >> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to
> > >> force people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding
> > >> properties. Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so
> > >> much at this point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate
> > >> that the patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so
> > >> everyone should se them, and when adding new properties it would make
> > >> the patch author more likely to look around a bit before adding
> > >> another slighty incompatible version of the same property. If someone
> > >> has a better suggestion how to encforce this I'm all ears.
> > >> 
> > >> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> > >> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any
> > >> thoughts on the subject?
> > > 
> > > Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
> > > when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
> > > 
> > > most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> > > really Intel I have to worry about so far,
> >  
> >  I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
> >  updates for the prop docs.
> >  
> > > But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as
> > > well.
> > > 
> > > I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> > > please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
> > > merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
> > > before I burn it.
> >  
> >  Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and
> >  maybe find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
> > >>> 
> > >>> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
> > >>> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for
> > >>> kernel-doc (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that
> > >>> effort.
> > >> 
> > >> Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...
> > > 
> > > I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits for
> > > them.
> > >
> > >> Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
> > >> I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
> > >> in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
> > >> sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of
> > >> the docbook xml into kerneldoc.
> > >> 
> > >> But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
> > >> gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:
> > >> 
> > >> - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
> > >>   especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether
> > >>   it's
> > > 
> > > Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so
> > > far.
> > > 
> > >>   markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
> > >>   text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook
> > >>   xml paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.
> > >> 
> > >> - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
> > >>   or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
> > >>   inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the
> > >>   entire project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more
> > >>   useful entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
> > >>   betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
> > >>   documentation.
> > > 
> > > That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.
> > > 
> > >> - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
> > >>   structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
> > >>   large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
> > >>   and struct member much closer together.
> > >> 
> > >> So that's my wishlist.
> > >> 
> > >>> OTOH, I would only want to 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Randy Dunlap]

On 08/01/14 05:58, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Randy,
> 
> On Thursday 31 July 2014 15:16:21 Randy Dunlap wrote:
>> On 05/12/14 11:04, Randy Dunlap wrote:
>>> On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
 On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code
> then I believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a
> properties table from kerneldoc information extracted from comments
> is probably not possible.

 Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be
 done?

 The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to
 force people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding
 properties. Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so
 much at this point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate
 that the patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so
 everyone should se them, and when adding new properties it would make
 the patch author more likely to look around a bit before adding
 another slighty incompatible version of the same property. If someone
 has a better suggestion how to encforce this I'm all ears.

 Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
 stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any
 thoughts on the subject?
>>>
>>> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
>>> when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
>>>
>>> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
>>> really Intel I have to worry about so far,
>>
>> I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
>> updates for the prop docs.
>>
>>> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as
>>> well.
>>>
>>> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
>>> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
>>> merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
>>> before I burn it.
>>
>> Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and
>> maybe find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
>
> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for
> kernel-doc (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that
> effort.

 Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...
>>>
>>> I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits for
>>> them.
>>>
 Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
 I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
 in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
 sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of
 the docbook xml into kerneldoc.

 But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
 gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:

 - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
   especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether
   it's
>>>
>>> Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so
>>> far.
>>>
   markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
   text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook
   xml paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.

 - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
   or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
   inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the
   entire project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more
   useful entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
   betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
   documentation.
>>>
>>> That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.
>>>
 - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
   structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
   large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
   and struct member much closer together.

 So that's my wishlist.

> OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be
> a full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide
> a way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.

 Hm, I don't mind docbook at 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Randy,

On Thursday 31 July 2014 15:16:21 Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 05/12/14 11:04, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> >>> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>  On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> >>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code
> >>> then I believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a
> >>> properties table from kerneldoc information extracted from comments
> >>> is probably not possible.
> >> 
> >> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be
> >> done?
> >> 
> >> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to
> >> force people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding
> >> properties. Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so
> >> much at this point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate
> >> that the patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so
> >> everyone should se them, and when adding new properties it would make
> >> the patch author more likely to look around a bit before adding
> >> another slighty incompatible version of the same property. If someone
> >> has a better suggestion how to encforce this I'm all ears.
> >> 
> >> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> >> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any
> >> thoughts on the subject?
> > 
> > Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
> > when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
> > 
> > most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> > really Intel I have to worry about so far,
>  
>  I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
>  updates for the prop docs.
>  
> > But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as
> > well.
> > 
> > I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> > please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
> > merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
> > before I burn it.
>  
>  Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and
>  maybe find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
> >>> 
> >>> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
> >>> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for
> >>> kernel-doc (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that
> >>> effort.
> >> 
> >> Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...
> > 
> > I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits for
> > them.
> >
> >> Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
> >> I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
> >> in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
> >> sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of
> >> the docbook xml into kerneldoc.
> >> 
> >> But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
> >> gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:
> >> 
> >> - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
> >>   especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether
> >>   it's
> > 
> > Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so
> > far.
> > 
> >>   markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
> >>   text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook
> >>   xml paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.
> >> 
> >> - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
> >>   or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
> >>   inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the
> >>   entire project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more
> >>   useful entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
> >>   betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
> >>   documentation.
> > 
> > That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.
> > 
> >> - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
> >>   structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
> >>   large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
> >>   and struct member much closer together.
> >> 
> >> So that's my wishlist.
> >> 
> >>> OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be
> >>> a full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide
> >>> a way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.
> >> 
> >> Hm, I don't mind docbook at all, as long as all the real 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Randy Dunlap]

On 05/12/14 11:04, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
>>> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
 On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
>>>
>>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code 
>>> then I
>>> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties 
>>> table
>>> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
>>> possible.
>>
>> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
>>
>> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
>> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
>> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
>> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
>> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
>> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
>> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
>> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
>> encforce this I'm all ears.
>>
>> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
>> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
>> on the subject?
>
> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
> when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
>
> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> really Intel I have to worry about so far,

 I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
 updates for the prop docs.

> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as 
> well.
>
> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
> merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
> before I burn it.

 Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and maybe
 find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
 -Daniel

>>>
>>> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
>>> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for kernel-doc
>>> (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that effort.
>>
>> Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...
> 
> I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits for them.
> 
>> Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
>> I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
>> in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
>> sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of the
>> docbook xml into kerneldoc.
>>
>> But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
>> gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:
>>
>> - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
>>   especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether it's
> 
> Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so far.
> 
>>   markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
>>   text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook xml
>>   paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.
>>
>> - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
>>   or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
>>   inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the entire
>>   project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more useful
>>   entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
>>   betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
>>   documentation.
>>
> 
> That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.
> 
>> - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
>>   structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
>>   large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
>>   and struct member much closer together.
>>
>> So that's my wishlist.
>>  
>>> OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be a
>>> full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide a
>>> way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.
>>
>> Hm, I don't mind docbook at all, as long as all the real content is
>> embedded into source files as kerneldoc and the docbook template just
>> pulls in all the right bits and pieces. Even gtkdoc allos you to do that
>> and pull in the different libararies (== header files with declarations
>> for C) in 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Laurent Pinchart
 wrote:
>> Also eventually I want to pull these tables directly out of source
>> code comments - everything else tends to never get updated when the
>> code changes.
>
> On the subject of moving documentation from docbook to source code, do your
> kerneldoc extensions plans include supporting images ? A drawing is worth a
> thousand words (see 
> http://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/subdev.html#subdev-image-processing-scaling-multi-source
>  for instance),
> and that's currently a pretty important feature of the docbook format.

That looks great I think I'll get a bit of doc envy ;-)

I don't think there's any reasonable way to generate such figures from
comments, maybe for simple ones some ascii art might work out. But
converting that to svg for the docbook seems to be an unsovled problem
(I've only found some hacks), so I think we need to manually pull
those into the docbook still. But excellent point for consideration.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Daniel,

On Tuesday 13 May 2014 09:34:45 Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:03:55AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 11:37:53AM +0530, Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> >> > I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
> >> > properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
> >> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html
> >> > 
> >> > Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
> >> > format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
> >> > manipulation).
> >> > 
> >> > Adding description of each property in their source might be time
> >> > consuming task.
> >> 
> >> Yeah I'm ok with docbook for the time being. My long-term plan is to fix
> >> up kerneldoc to support markdown and then we can move such neat tables
> >> into the code. There's lots other places that would benefit from proper
> >> list formatting and tables. So Ack from my side on both the docbook patch
> >> and the no-more-props-without-doc-patch rule (which is kinda what I've
> >> been doing thus far).
> > 
> > What happened to the proposal to add this to the Documentation/ABI
> > directory? That already contains a bunch of files describing userspace
> > ABI (although most of it is sysfs-related).
> > 
> > The objection that I have to including property documentation in docbook
> > is that the DRM docbook is documentation targetted at driver developers,
> > but properties are userspace ABI. Therefore I think we should be using
> > mechanisms that have been used to document other userspace ABI before to
> > make it easier for people to find (and for consistency).
> > 
> > One big advantage in using Documentation/ABI is that there's a fairly
> > well documented process of how to add, deprecate and remove ABI. There's
> > also a template that should be followed when writing these files. People
> > have obviously put some thought into this before, so it would be a bit
> > of a waste trying to come up with our own.
> > 
> > The README file has some good information about all of this and I think
> > it matches what we need fairly well. In particular I like the concept of
> > the "Users" section, which could save us a lot of work trying to track
> > potential users of crufty ABI retrospectively.
> 
> Not really sold on this, since in the end if we break userspace we
> have to fix it up anyway. And all these properties are meant to be
> used by userspace after all. I think for properties it's more
> important to keep them all grouped together so that if new driver
> writes look for something to use they don't reinvent a slight
> variation of something existing again. Documentation/ABI otoh seems to
> split things up per-knob, even across stable/testing/deprecated
> directories.
> 
> Also eventually I want to pull these tables directly out of source
> code comments - everything else tends to never get updated when the
> code changes.

On the subject of moving documentation from docbook to source code, do your 
kerneldoc extensions plans include supporting images ? A drawing is worth a 
thousand words (see 
http://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/subdev.html#subdev-image-processing-scaling-multi-source
 for instance), 
and that's currently a pretty important feature of the docbook format.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Thierry Reding]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 09:34:45AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Thierry Reding
>  wrote:
> > On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:03:55AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 11:37:53AM +0530, Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> >> > I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
> >> > properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
> >> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html
> >> >
> >> > Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
> >> > format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
> >> > manipulation).
> >> >
> >> > Adding description of each property in their source might be time
> >> > consuming task.
> >>
> >> Yeah I'm ok with docbook for the time being. My long-term plan is to fix
> >> up kerneldoc to support markdown and then we can move such neat tables
> >> into the code. There's lots other places that would benefit from proper
> >> list formatting and tables. So Ack from my side on both the docbook patch
> >> and the no-more-props-without-doc-patch rule (which is kinda what I've
> >> been doing thus far).
> >
> > What happened to the proposal to add this to the Documentation/ABI
> > directory? That already contains a bunch of files describing userspace
> > ABI (although most of it is sysfs-related).
> >
> > The objection that I have to including property documentation in docbook
> > is that the DRM docbook is documentation targetted at driver developers,
> > but properties are userspace ABI. Therefore I think we should be using
> > mechanisms that have been used to document other userspace ABI before to
> > make it easier for people to find (and for consistency).
> >
> > One big advantage in using Documentation/ABI is that there's a fairly
> > well documented process of how to add, deprecate and remove ABI. There's
> > also a template that should be followed when writing these files. People
> > have obviously put some thought into this before, so it would be a bit
> > of a waste trying to come up with our own.
> >
> > The README file has some good information about all of this and I think
> > it matches what we need fairly well. In particular I like the concept of
> > the "Users" section, which could save us a lot of work trying to track
> > potential users of crufty ABI retrospectively.
> 
> Not really sold on this, since in the end if we break userspace we
> have to fix it up anyway. And all these properties are meant to be
> used by userspace after all.

It's precisely because they are used by userspace that I think it's a
good idea to have them documented in a place where userspace developers
would look for them. I don't think anyone will look at the DRM docbook
because it's targetted at driver developers. That said there is a tiny
section called "Userland interfaces", so perhaps adding code to that and
pointing everyone at it would be an option. In which case I still think
we should follow some of the same guidelines as outlined in the ABI
documentation about deprecating and versioning properties. Keeping a
list of known users would also be great to have in case we ever need to
modify or want to remove ABI.

> I think for properties it's more important to keep them all grouped
> together so that if new driver writes look for something to use they
> don't reinvent a slight variation of something existing again.
> Documentation/ABI otoh seems to split things up per-knob, even across
> stable/testing/deprecated directories.

I guess that's mostly a matter of convention. We could easily add a
"drm" subdirectory that contains the DRM property documentation. And in
my opinion having to scan a list of file names, such as:

drm-connector-property-foo
drm-plane-property-bar
drm-plane-property-baz

isn't any more difficult than scanning the same list in docbook format.
So either way people will have to know where to look and then bother to
look in order for this to work. Whether it's in Documentation/ABI or
docbook is irrelevant.

Also there's a good reason for having the stable/testing/deprecated
split. That could also give additional hints as to whether it's a good
idea to add some property or not. If somebody were to add a property to
their driver that's been deprecated or removed for some other driver, a
look at the corresponding file should indicate why it was removed. That
could be valuable in pointing people in the right direction.

Similarly, if some property was documented in the stable subdirectory,
that would indicate that it's been deemed ready for prime time and give
more credibility. It also means that more userspace is likely to use it
and therefore might be higher priority to implement in new drivers.

> Also eventually I want to pull these tables directly out of source
> code comments - everything else tends to never get updated when the
> code changes.

There are no guarantees that people will keep code 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Thierry Reding
 wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:03:55AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 11:37:53AM +0530, Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
>> > I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
>> > properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
>> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html
>> >
>> > Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
>> > format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
>> > manipulation).
>> >
>> > Adding description of each property in their source might be time
>> > consuming task.
>>
>> Yeah I'm ok with docbook for the time being. My long-term plan is to fix
>> up kerneldoc to support markdown and then we can move such neat tables
>> into the code. There's lots other places that would benefit from proper
>> list formatting and tables. So Ack from my side on both the docbook patch
>> and the no-more-props-without-doc-patch rule (which is kinda what I've
>> been doing thus far).
>
> What happened to the proposal to add this to the Documentation/ABI
> directory? That already contains a bunch of files describing userspace
> ABI (although most of it is sysfs-related).
>
> The objection that I have to including property documentation in docbook
> is that the DRM docbook is documentation targetted at driver developers,
> but properties are userspace ABI. Therefore I think we should be using
> mechanisms that have been used to document other userspace ABI before to
> make it easier for people to find (and for consistency).
>
> One big advantage in using Documentation/ABI is that there's a fairly
> well documented process of how to add, deprecate and remove ABI. There's
> also a template that should be followed when writing these files. People
> have obviously put some thought into this before, so it would be a bit
> of a waste trying to come up with our own.
>
> The README file has some good information about all of this and I think
> it matches what we need fairly well. In particular I like the concept of
> the "Users" section, which could save us a lot of work trying to track
> potential users of crufty ABI retrospectively.

Not really sold on this, since in the end if we break userspace we
have to fix it up anyway. And all these properties are meant to be
used by userspace after all. I think for properties it's more
important to keep them all grouped together so that if new driver
writes look for something to use they don't reinvent a slight
variation of something existing again. Documentation/ABI otoh seems to
split things up per-knob, even across stable/testing/deprecated
directories.

Also eventually I want to pull these tables directly out of source
code comments - everything else tends to never get updated when the
code changes.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Thierry Reding]

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:03:55AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 11:37:53AM +0530, Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> > I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
> > properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html
> > 
> > Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
> > format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
> > manipulation).
> > 
> > Adding description of each property in their source might be time
> > consuming task.
> 
> Yeah I'm ok with docbook for the time being. My long-term plan is to fix
> up kerneldoc to support markdown and then we can move such neat tables
> into the code. There's lots other places that would benefit from proper
> list formatting and tables. So Ack from my side on both the docbook patch
> and the no-more-props-without-doc-patch rule (which is kinda what I've
> been doing thus far).

What happened to the proposal to add this to the Documentation/ABI
directory? That already contains a bunch of files describing userspace
ABI (although most of it is sysfs-related).

The objection that I have to including property documentation in docbook
is that the DRM docbook is documentation targetted at driver developers,
but properties are userspace ABI. Therefore I think we should be using
mechanisms that have been used to document other userspace ABI before to
make it easier for people to find (and for consistency).

One big advantage in using Documentation/ABI is that there's a fairly
well documented process of how to add, deprecate and remove ABI. There's
also a template that should be followed when writing these files. People
have obviously put some thought into this before, so it would be a bit
of a waste trying to come up with our own.

The README file has some good information about all of this and I think
it matches what we need fairly well. In particular I like the concept of
the "Users" section, which could save us a lot of work trying to track
potential users of crufty ABI retrospectively.

Thierry
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[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Dave Airlie]

>>
>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I
>> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table
>> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not possible.
>
> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
>
> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> encforce this I'm all ears.
>
> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> on the subject?

Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,

most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
really Intel I have to worry about so far,

But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as well.

I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
before I burn it.

Dave.

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> 
>  If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code 
>  then I
>  believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties 
>  table
>  from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
>  possible.
> >>>
> >>> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
> >>>
> >>> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> >>> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> >>> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> >>> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> >>> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> >>> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> >>> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> >>> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> >>> encforce this I'm all ears.
> >>>
> >>> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> >>> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> >>> on the subject?
> >>
> >> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
> >> when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
> >>
> >> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> >> really Intel I have to worry about so far,
> > 
> > I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
> > updates for the prop docs.
> > 
> >> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as well.
> >>
> >> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> >> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
> >> merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
> >> before I burn it.
> > 
> > Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and maybe
> > find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
> > -Daniel
> > 
> 
> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for kernel-doc
> (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that effort.

Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...

Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of the
docbook xml into kerneldoc.

But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:

- No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
  especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether it's
  markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
  text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook xml
  paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.

- Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
  or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
  inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the entire
  project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more useful
  entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
  betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
  documentation.

- In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
  structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
  large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
  and struct member much closer together.

So that's my wishlist.

> OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be a
> full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide a
> way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.

Hm, I don't mind docbook at all, as long as all the real content is
embedded into source files as kerneldoc and the docbook template just
pulls in all the right bits and pieces. Even gtkdoc allos you to do that
and pull in the different libararies (== header files with declarations
for C) in the order you want. So imo the docbook toolchain is good enough
for my needs.

Or what do you mean by getting rid of all docbook usage?
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Sagar Arun Kamble]

I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html

Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
manipulation).

Adding description of each property in their source might be time
consuming task.

thanks,
Sagar


On Sat, 2014-05-10 at 06:56 -0400, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 6:39 AM, Ville Syrj?l?
>  wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:25:06PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> >> Hi Sagar,
> >>
> >> On Wednesday 12 March 2014 16:46:05 Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> >> > On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 15:36 +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> >> > > On Monday 10 March 2014 06:21:49 Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> > > > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:56 AM,   
> >> > > > wrote:
> >> > > > > +
> >> > > > > +
> >> > > > > +
> >> > > > > +Owner Module/Drivers
> >> > > > > +Group
> >> > > > > +Property Object
> >> > > > > +Property Name
> >> > > > > +Type
> >> > > > > +Property Values
> >> > > > > +Object attached
> >> > > > > +Description
> >> > > > > +
> >> > > >
> >> > > > In my opinion this is a horrible way to write property documentations
> >> > > > - explicitly constructing html tables is error prone and really hard
> >> > > > to read in the source. Imo docbook in general is rather horrible,
> >> > > > which is way I write almost all my docs as kerneldoc ;-)
> >> > > >
> >> > > > I think a simple asciidoc/markdown would be much simpler, with a bit
> >> > > > of free-form structure to group properties into relevant groups.
> >> > > > Long-term we might even need to split it up into different spec files
> >> > > > to keep a good overview.
> >> > >
> >> > > Docbook is indeed hard to read and write when it comes to such tables.
> >> > > However I like having the properties documented in the DRM core
> >> > > documentation. Maybe we could come up with a simpler text format that
> >> > > would be transformed into docbook when compiling the documentation ?
> >> >
> >> > Does this mean we need to create comment block with "Doc: drm
> >> > properties" style section in each driver where drm properties are
> >> > instantiated. And then in drm.tmpl collect all these using !P escape
> >> > sequence?
> >> > How do create table out of these across all drivers?
> >>
> >> I don't have a strong preference here. Documenting properties in source 
> >> code
> >> comments would be fine, so would an external central documentation file in 
> >> a
> >> non Docbook format. For the record I'm personally fine with using Docbook 
> >> as
> >> in this patch :-)
> >>
> >> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I
> >> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table
> >> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
> >> possible.
> >
> > Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
> >
> > The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> > people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> > Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> > point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> > patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> > them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> > likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> > version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> > encforce this I'm all ears.
> >
> > Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> > stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> > on the subject?
> >
> > Either way I can tell you that I'm not very enthusiastic about reviewing
> > any property patches until some kind of decision about this is reached,
> > be it "docbook", "text", "plan c", or "fuck it, let the world burn!".
> 
> any of the first three options would be vastly superior to what we do now
> 
> tbh, I'd suggest imposing a no-new-properties-without-docs rule even
> if we haven't finished bikeshedding about the docs format.  That might
> motivate someone to hurry up and just pick one.
> 
> We can change the format, figure out some way to get it into docbook,
> etc, later.. it's not such a huge volume of words we have to type here
> that we can't reformat it later.
> 
> BR,
> -R
> 
> 
> >
> > --
> > Ville Syrj?l?
> > Intel OTC
> > ___
> > dri-devel mailing list
> > dri-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Randy Dunlap]

On 05/12/2014 08:54 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 08:23:45AM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
>> On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>>> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
>>
>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code 
>> then I
>> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties 
>> table
>> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
>> possible.
>
> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
>
> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> encforce this I'm all ears.
>
> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> on the subject?

 Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
 when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,

 most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
 really Intel I have to worry about so far,
>>>
>>> I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
>>> updates for the prop docs.
>>>
 But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as well.

 I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
 please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
 merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
 before I burn it.
>>>
>>> Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and maybe
>>> find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
>>> -Daniel
>>>
>>
>> I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
>> There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for kernel-doc
>> (a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that effort.
> 
> Hm, do you have pointers to those? My google-fu seems lacking ...

I googled for /kernel doc asciidoc ravnborg/ and found several hits for them.

> Ok, let's move this to the top and start discussions. The past few months
> I've written piles of kerneldoc comments for the DRM DocBook (all pulled
> in as kerneldoc, docbook .tmpl has just the chapter structure). DOC:
> sections are really useful to pull all the actual documentation out of the
> docbook xml into kerneldoc.
> 
> But I've also done piles of docs for intel-gpu-tools, which is using
> gtkdoc. And there are some clear deficiencies:
> 
> - No markdown for inline coments. Lack of lists and tables is hurting
>   especially badly. If we add this (and I don't care one iota whether it's

Yes, I've tried to add lists to kernel-doc notation but have failed so far.

>   markdown or asciidoc or something else as long as it's readable plain
>   text in comments) we should be able to move all the existing docbook xml
>   paragraphs/lists/tables into kerneldoc comments.
> 
> - Automatic cross-referencing of functions. If you place e.g. function()
>   or #struct anywhere in a documentation comment gtk-doc automatically
>   inserts a hyperlink to the relevant documentation page across the entire
>   project. Really powerful and makes overview sections much more useful
>   entry points for beginners since they can easily jump back
>   betweeen the high-level overview and low-level per-function
>   documentation.
> 

That's a nice-to-have IMO, but a really nice one.

> - In a really perfect world it would help if kerneldoc could collect
>   structure member kerneldoc from per-member comments. Especially for
>   large structures with lots of comments this would bring the kerneldoc
>   and struct member much closer together.
> 
> So that's my wishlist.
>  
>> OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be a
>> full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide a
>> way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.
> 
> Hm, I don't mind docbook at all, as long as all the real content is
> embedded into source files as kerneldoc and the docbook template just
> pulls in all the right bits and pieces. Even gtkdoc allos you to do that
> and pull in the different libararies (== header files with declarations
> for C) in the order you want. So imo the docbook toolchain is good enough
> for my needs.
> 
> Or what do you mean by getting rid of all docbook usage?

I meant 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> >>
> >> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I
> >> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table
> >> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
> >> possible.
> >
> > Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
> >
> > The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> > people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> > Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> > point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> > patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> > them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> > likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> > version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> > encforce this I'm all ears.
> >
> > Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> > stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> > on the subject?
> 
> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
> when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
> 
> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
> really Intel I have to worry about so far,

I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
updates for the prop docs.

> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as well.
> 
> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
> merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
> before I burn it.

Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and maybe
find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Daniel Vetter]

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 11:37:53AM +0530, Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> I support approach using docbook to start since there are not lot of
> properties. Laurent has ack'ed this one. Can we go ahead with this?
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2014-March/041527.html
> 
> Adding description of new property is not very complex (assuming table
> format is understood and being comfortable with HTML row/table
> manipulation).
> 
> Adding description of each property in their source might be time
> consuming task.

Yeah I'm ok with docbook for the time being. My long-term plan is to fix
up kerneldoc to support markdown and then we can move such neat tables
into the code. There's lots other places that would benefit from proper
list formatting and tables. So Ack from my side on both the docbook patch
and the no-more-props-without-doc-patch rule (which is kinda what I've
been doing thus far).
-Daniel

> 
> thanks,
> Sagar
> 
> 
> On Sat, 2014-05-10 at 06:56 -0400, Rob Clark wrote:
> > On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 6:39 AM, Ville Syrj?l?
> >  wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:25:06PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > >> Hi Sagar,
> > >>
> > >> On Wednesday 12 March 2014 16:46:05 Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> > >> > On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 15:36 +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > >> > > On Monday 10 March 2014 06:21:49 Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > >> > > > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:56 AM,   
> > >> > > > wrote:
> > >> > > > > +
> > >> > > > > +
> > >> > > > > +
> > >> > > > > +Owner Module/Drivers
> > >> > > > > +Group
> > >> > > > > +Property Object
> > >> > > > > +Property Name
> > >> > > > > +Type
> > >> > > > > +Property Values
> > >> > > > > +Object attached
> > >> > > > > +Description
> > >> > > > > +
> > >> > > >
> > >> > > > In my opinion this is a horrible way to write property 
> > >> > > > documentations
> > >> > > > - explicitly constructing html tables is error prone and really 
> > >> > > > hard
> > >> > > > to read in the source. Imo docbook in general is rather horrible,
> > >> > > > which is way I write almost all my docs as kerneldoc ;-)
> > >> > > >
> > >> > > > I think a simple asciidoc/markdown would be much simpler, with a 
> > >> > > > bit
> > >> > > > of free-form structure to group properties into relevant groups.
> > >> > > > Long-term we might even need to split it up into different spec 
> > >> > > > files
> > >> > > > to keep a good overview.
> > >> > >
> > >> > > Docbook is indeed hard to read and write when it comes to such 
> > >> > > tables.
> > >> > > However I like having the properties documented in the DRM core
> > >> > > documentation. Maybe we could come up with a simpler text format that
> > >> > > would be transformed into docbook when compiling the documentation ?
> > >> >
> > >> > Does this mean we need to create comment block with "Doc: drm
> > >> > properties" style section in each driver where drm properties are
> > >> > instantiated. And then in drm.tmpl collect all these using !P escape
> > >> > sequence?
> > >> > How do create table out of these across all drivers?
> > >>
> > >> I don't have a strong preference here. Documenting properties in source 
> > >> code
> > >> comments would be fine, so would an external central documentation file 
> > >> in a
> > >> non Docbook format. For the record I'm personally fine with using 
> > >> Docbook as
> > >> in this patch :-)
> > >>
> > >> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code 
> > >> then I
> > >> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties 
> > >> table
> > >> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
> > >> possible.
> > >
> > > Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
> > >
> > > The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> > > people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> > > Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> > > point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> > > patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> > > them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> > > likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> > > version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> > > encforce this I'm all ears.
> > >
> > > Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> > > stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> > > on the subject?
> > >
> > > Either way I can tell you that I'm not very enthusiastic about reviewing
> > > any property patches until some kind of decision about this is reached,
> > > be it "docbook", "text", "plan c", or "fuck it, let the world burn!".
> > 
> > any of the first three options would be vastly superior to what we do now
> > 
> > tbh, I'd suggest imposing a no-new-properties-without-docs rule even
> > if we haven't 

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Randy Dunlap]

On 05/12/2014 01:58 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 06:24:57PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:

 If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I
 believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table
 from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not 
 possible.
>>>
>>> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
>>>
>>> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
>>> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
>>> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
>>> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
>>> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
>>> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
>>> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
>>> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
>>> encforce this I'm all ears.
>>>
>>> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
>>> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
>>> on the subject?
>>
>> Yeah I'm happy to block merging stuff, if we can spot new properties
>> when stuff is posted on dri-devel, so much the better,
>>
>> most drivers still send everything via dri-devel anyways, its only
>> really Intel I have to worry about so far,
> 
> I'll enforce that all prop stuff gets cc: dri-devel and that it has
> updates for the prop docs.
> 
>> But we should definitely add it to the new driver review checklist as well.
>>
>> I'm also on the side of this patch is ugly and makes my eyes burn,
>> please please get a plan to use something else ASAP, I'm willing to
>> merge this but I'm tempted to give it a lifetime of a kernel or two
>> before I burn it.
> 
> Ok, I'll try to move "make kerneldoc suck less" up the task list and maybe
> find someone to do it for me internally ;-)
> -Daniel
> 

I certainly have no objections to making kerneldoc suck less.
There was already an attempt to use asciidoc (like git uses) for kernel-doc
(a few years ago, by Sam Ravnborg).  I support(ed) that effort.

OTOH, I would only want to add another way to do kernel-doc if it can be a
full replacement for all of our docbook usage, i.e., it should provide a
way that we can eliminate docbook and stop using it completely.

thanks,
-- 
~Randy

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Ville Syrjälä]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:25:06PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Sagar,
> 
> On Wednesday 12 March 2014 16:46:05 Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
> > On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 15:36 +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > > On Monday 10 March 2014 06:21:49 Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:56 AM,   wrote:
> > > > > +
> > > > > +
> > > > > +
> > > > > +Owner Module/Drivers
> > > > > +Group
> > > > > +Property Object
> > > > > +Property Name
> > > > > +Type
> > > > > +Property Values
> > > > > +Object attached
> > > > > +Description
> > > > > +
> > > > 
> > > > In my opinion this is a horrible way to write property documentations
> > > > - explicitly constructing html tables is error prone and really hard
> > > > to read in the source. Imo docbook in general is rather horrible,
> > > > which is way I write almost all my docs as kerneldoc ;-)
> > > > 
> > > > I think a simple asciidoc/markdown would be much simpler, with a bit
> > > > of free-form structure to group properties into relevant groups.
> > > > Long-term we might even need to split it up into different spec files
> > > > to keep a good overview.
> > > 
> > > Docbook is indeed hard to read and write when it comes to such tables.
> > > However I like having the properties documented in the DRM core
> > > documentation. Maybe we could come up with a simpler text format that
> > > would be transformed into docbook when compiling the documentation ?
> > 
> > Does this mean we need to create comment block with "Doc: drm
> > properties" style section in each driver where drm properties are
> > instantiated. And then in drm.tmpl collect all these using !P escape
> > sequence?
> > How do create table out of these across all drivers?
> 
> I don't have a strong preference here. Documenting properties in source code 
> comments would be fine, so would an external central documentation file in a 
> non Docbook format. For the record I'm personally fine with using Docbook as 
> in this patch :-)
> 
> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I 
> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table 
> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not possible.

Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?

The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
encforce this I'm all ears.

Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
on the subject?

Either way I can tell you that I'm not very enthusiastic about reviewing
any property patches until some kind of decision about this is reached,
be it "docbook", "text", "plan c", or "fuck it, let the world burn!".

-- 
Ville Syrj?l?
Intel OTC

[PATCH 1/1] Documentation: drm: describing drm properties exposed by various drivers

[Rob Clark]

On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 6:39 AM, Ville Syrj?l?
 wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:25:06PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
>> Hi Sagar,
>>
>> On Wednesday 12 March 2014 16:46:05 Sagar Arun Kamble wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 15:36 +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
>> > > On Monday 10 March 2014 06:21:49 Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> > > > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:56 AM,   wrote:
>> > > > > +
>> > > > > +
>> > > > > +
>> > > > > +Owner Module/Drivers
>> > > > > +Group
>> > > > > +Property Object
>> > > > > +Property Name
>> > > > > +Type
>> > > > > +Property Values
>> > > > > +Object attached
>> > > > > +Description
>> > > > > +
>> > > >
>> > > > In my opinion this is a horrible way to write property documentations
>> > > > - explicitly constructing html tables is error prone and really hard
>> > > > to read in the source. Imo docbook in general is rather horrible,
>> > > > which is way I write almost all my docs as kerneldoc ;-)
>> > > >
>> > > > I think a simple asciidoc/markdown would be much simpler, with a bit
>> > > > of free-form structure to group properties into relevant groups.
>> > > > Long-term we might even need to split it up into different spec files
>> > > > to keep a good overview.
>> > >
>> > > Docbook is indeed hard to read and write when it comes to such tables.
>> > > However I like having the properties documented in the DRM core
>> > > documentation. Maybe we could come up with a simpler text format that
>> > > would be transformed into docbook when compiling the documentation ?
>> >
>> > Does this mean we need to create comment block with "Doc: drm
>> > properties" style section in each driver where drm properties are
>> > instantiated. And then in drm.tmpl collect all these using !P escape
>> > sequence?
>> > How do create table out of these across all drivers?
>>
>> I don't have a strong preference here. Documenting properties in source code
>> comments would be fine, so would an external central documentation file in a
>> non Docbook format. For the record I'm personally fine with using Docbook as
>> in this patch :-)
>>
>> If we decide to go for property documentation inside the source code then I
>> believe we'll have to create our own format, as creating a properties table
>> from kerneldoc information extracted from comments is probably not possible.
>
> Can comeone pick up the ball here and figure out what needs to be done?
>
> The reason why I want a central place for the documentation is to force
> people to collaborate outside their own sandbox when adding properties.
> Whether that's docbook or some text file I don't care so much at this
> point. The fact that it's a central place should mandate that the
> patches changing it will go through dri-devel and so everyone should se
> them, and when adding new properties it would make the patch author more
> likely to look around a bit before adding another slighty incompatible
> version of the same property. If someone has a better suggestion how to
> encforce this I'm all ears.
>
> Of course this idea can still fail if our esteemed maintainer merges
> stuff without checking for violations of this policy. Dave, any thoughts
> on the subject?
>
> Either way I can tell you that I'm not very enthusiastic about reviewing
> any property patches until some kind of decision about this is reached,
> be it "docbook", "text", "plan c", or "fuck it, let the world burn!".

any of the first three options would be vastly superior to what we do now

tbh, I'd suggest imposing a no-new-properties-without-docs rule even
if we haven't finished bikeshedding about the docs format.  That might
motivate someone to hurry up and just pick one.

We can change the format, figure out some way to get it into docbook,
etc, later.. it's not such a huge volume of words we have to type here
that we can't reformat it later.

BR,
-R


>
> --
> Ville Syrj?l?
> Intel OTC
> ___
> dri-devel mailing list
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