Re: [PATCH 00/32] docs/vm: convert to ReST format

[Jonathan Corbet]

Sorry for the silence, I'm pedaling as fast as I can, honest...

On Sun, 1 Apr 2018 09:38:58 +0300
Mike Rapoport <rppt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> My thinking was to start with mechanical RST conversion and then to start
> working on the contents and ordering of the documentation. Some of the
> existing files, e.g. ksm.txt, can be moved as is into the appropriate
> places, others, like transhuge.txt should be at least split into admin/user
> and developer guides.
> 
> Another problem with many of the existing mm docs is that they are rather
> developer notes and it wouldn't be really straight forward to assign them
> to a particular topic.

All this sounds good.

> I believe that keeping the mm docs together will give better visibility of
> what (little) mm documentation we have and will make the updates easier.
> The documents that fit well into a certain topic could be linked there. For
> instance:

...but this sounds like just the opposite...?  

I've had this conversation with folks in a number of subsystems.
Everybody wants to keep their documentation together in one place - it's
easier for the developers after all.  But for the readers I think it's
objectively worse.  It perpetuates the mess that Documentation/ is, and
forces readers to go digging through all kinds of inappropriate material
in the hope of finding something that tells them what they need to know.

So I would *really* like to split the documentation by audience, as has
been done for a number of other kernel subsystems (and eventually all, I
hope).

I can go ahead and apply the RST conversion, that seems like a step in
the right direction regardless.  But I sure hope we don't really have to
keep it as an unorganized jumble of stuff...

Thanks,

jon