Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/3] Documentation: refactor config variable descriptions

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 25, 2010, 12:44 UTC
Message-ID: <201010251444.08780.jnareb@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20101022155307.GB5554@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Fri, 22 Oct 2010, Jeff King wrote:

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> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 07:02:28AM +0200, Thomas Rast wrote:
> 
> > This resurrects (finally) the earlier attempt at
> > 
> >   http://mid.gmane.org/cover.1280169048.git.trast@student.ethz.ch
> > 
> > It tries the inverse approach: teaching the script how to find config
> > variable blocks in each manpage, and then linking them from the main
> > list.  (Obviously just inserting them into the main list could also
> > work.)
> > 
> > In other words, it attempts to push out the "original" documentation
> > of each variable from the main list to the individual manpage, which
> > is exactly opposite from v1.
> 
> Thanks for working on this.

 
[...]

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> I have two comments on the approach:
> 
>   1. It looks like you're more or less just parsing "::" list keys from
>      all of the manpages. This seems somewhat fragile, as there could be
>      other non-config lists. Can we at least restrict it to
>      CONFIGURATION sections? It would be nice if we could put in some
>      kind of semantic markup, but I'm not sure how painful that would be
>      with asciidoc (we could always resort to comments in the source,
>      but that would probably get unreadable quickly).

The regexp for catching config variables is quite strict, but tests done with my version of script modifier further to check for CONFIGURATION-like sections (matching /^Config/) shown that we have problems either way.

1. Without checking for CONFIGURATION sections, we have what are 
   probably false positives from gitmodules.txt:

     submodule.<name>.path::
     submodule.<name>.url::
     submodule.<name>.update::
     submodule.<name>.ignore::

   I say *probably* because while gitmodules manpage describes those 
   variables as going into .gitmodules, if I understand it correctly
   those variables can got to .git/config as an override.

2. With checking for CONFIGURATION-like, we would miss the following
   configuration variables:

     http.getanyfile:: (for git-http-backend, in 'SERVICES')
     http.uploadpack:: (for git-http-backend, in 'SERVICES')
     http.receivepack:: (for git-http-backend, in 'SERVICES')

   These are in git-http-backend manpage, in 'SERVICES' section, which 
   probably should be named then 'CONFIGURING SERVICES'.

   BTW, CONFIGURATION-like means:

    * Configuration
    * CONFIGURATION
   
  but also

    * CONFIG FILE-ONLY OPTIONS
    * CONFIGURATION FILE
    * Configuration Mechanism
    * CONFIG VARIABLES
    * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
    * Configuring database backend

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> 
>   2. You recursively follow includes via include::. This means that the
>      make rule is not accurate. E.g., try:
> 
>        rm cmds-mainporcelain.txt config-vars.txt
>        make config-vars.txt
> 
>      which should fail, as we actually depend on cmds-mainporcelain.txt.
>      Doing it accurately and automatically would mean making .depend
>      files for make.

We do that: see 'doc.dep' target in Documentation/Makefile. We just need for this target to also add dependencies for config-vars.txt (perhaps separate mode for make-config-list.perl, or perhaps build-docdep.perl should be config-vars-src.txt aware...).

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> 
>      But I wonder if the recursive lookup is really required. Some of
>      the includes with config files can just go away (e.g.,
>      merge-config.txt is included only by config-vars-src.txt and
>      git-merge.txt; it can just be merged straight into git-merge.txt
>      once this system exists).

merge-config.txt is the only included file with config variables. Other includes does not contain config variables. And because merge-config.txt is also included in config-vars-src.txt, therefore the whole recursive lookup is not necessary.

Note however that make-config-list.perl only creates minimal documentation, just link(s) to appropriate mapage(s). Include-ing merge-config.txt both in git-merge.txt and config-vars-src.txt means that we have merg config variables defined in git-config(1) manpage, which I think is nice to have.

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>      Others, like pretty-formats.txt, should, 
>      IMHO, get their own user-visible page. Right now with your script
>      you get[1]:
> 
>        format.pretty::
>                The default pretty format for log/show/whatchanged command,
>                See linkgit:git-log[1], linkgit:git-show[1],
>                linkgit:git-whatchanged[1].
> 
>      but I would rather see[2]:
> 
>        format.pretty::
>                See linkgit:gitpretty[7].

Actually the above block describing `format.pretty` is from beginning in config-vars-src.txt, and is not added / created by said script.

> 
>      [1]: I assume the single line of block description is an error in
>           your script.

Hmmm?

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland