Re: Documentation of kernel messages (Summary)

[Michael Holzheu]

Hi Rob,

On Tue, 2007-07-10 at 12:12 -0400, Rob Landley wrote:

[snip]

> > Yeah, but it seems like having a translations directory in the kernel
> > avoids that problem - anyone can update, it is a single source, no digging
> > for sites that aren't tied to the kernel, available in the distros
> > directly, etc.
> 
> No.  It doesn't help.
> 
> 99% of the kernel directory is C.  That means any random passerby can review 
> code.  Everyone who has the kernel tarball should be able to review code 
> that's in there, plus when you compile it breaks.  So merging _code_ into the 
> kernel helps keep it up to date.
> 
> Merging documentation into the kernel doesn't help keep it up to date, because 
> documentation being out of date doesn't break the build.  It may get the 
> documentation more review, but the existing state of Documentation/* argues 
> against that.  It's a struggle to keep the english versions on the same 
> continent as "up to date" or "complete", and most of the _good_ documentation 
> is out in OLS papers and such (which I'm off indexing as we speak).

With the checker tool, which we suggested in the initial proposal, it is
possible to verify

 * that every marked message has a description
 * that there are no descriptions without corresponding messages
 * that format strings of message and description match

So when compiling the kernel using C=1, you will at least see warnings,
when a message has changed or a message disappeared:

>> make modules C=1
  CHK     include/linux/version.h
  CHK     include/linux/utsrelease.h
  CHECK   drivers/kmsgtest/kmsgtest.c
drivers/kmsgtest/kmsgtest.c: Missing description for: kmsgtest.1
drivers/kmsgtest/kmsgtest.c: Description without message for: kmsgtest.3

Michael



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