Re: [patch] kernel API documentation system

Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@pobox.com)
Sun, 26 Sep 1999 17:35:09 -0400


Jes Sorensen wrote:
>
> >>>>> "Ed" == Ed Grimm <tgape@bigfoot.com> writes:
>
> Ed> On 26 Sep 1999, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> >> Putting auto generated documents in the same directory as the
> >> static ones is a bad idea imho. It makes it hard for people to keep
> >> track of what can be deleted and what cannot.
>
> Ed> Wouldn't the fact that 'make clean' removes it be good enough?
> Ed> How about adding a Documentation/Makefile, which also has a make
> Ed> clean to get rid of them?
>
> This could work, but it is less clear and if you run around trying to
> extract documentation from every C file in the kernel, which I asume
> is the idea, then the Makefile doesn't know what documentation to
> delete and what not to.
>
> I am not against putting auto extractable documentation in the code,
> but I think it would be safer to put the output in a seperate
> directory and not mix it with static files.

Currently the system only generates one huge, whopping kernel-api.html
file. So it's really a non-issue (make clean takes care of it, as noted
above).

But I agree with you -- kernel-doc.pl currently outputs man pages. And
I think it would be handy to generate man pages for kernel API
functions. (my patch only requires a little Makefile scripting in order
to do that)

So, there should definitely be a "Documentation/man" directory or
similar, which is treated just like the current "linux/modules"
directory is now.

Jeff

-- 
Custom driver development	|    Never worry about theory as long
Open source programming		|    as the machinery does what it's
				|    supposed to do.  -- R. A. Heinlein

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