Re: [PATCH v2 00/25] kernel-doc: make it parse new functions and structs

[Jacob Keller]

On 1/28/2026 2:00 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:15:51 -0800
> Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On 1/28/2026 9:27 AM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> > > Do we really need another unit-testing setup in the kernel?  I can't say
> > > I'm familiar enough with kunit to say whether it would work for
> > > non-kernel code; have you looked and verified that it isn't suitable?
> > >    
> >
> > I'm not sure kunit would be suitable here, since its meant for running
> > kernel code and does a lot of stuff to make that possible. It might be
> > able to be extended, but.. this is python code. Why *shouldn't* we use
> > one of the python unit test frameworks for it?
>
> This is not using kunit. It is using standard "import unittest" from
> Python internal lib.

Right. I think it makes perfect sense to use unittest for python files. 
That was the point of my reply above :D

> > We have other python code in tree. Does any of that code have unit tests?
>
> Good question. On a quick grep, it sounds so:
>
> 	$ git grep "import unittest" tools scripts
> 	scripts/rust_is_available_test.py:import unittest
> 	tools/crypto/ccp/test_dbc.py:import unittest
> 	tools/perf/pmu-events/metric_test.py:import unittest
> 	tools/testing/kunit/kunit_tool_test.py:import unittest
> 	tools/testing/selftests/bpf/test_bpftool.py:import unittest
> 	tools/testing/selftests/tpm2/tpm2.py:import unittest
> 	tools/testing/selftests/tpm2/tpm2_tests.py:import unittest
>
> > I agree that it doesn't make sense to build new bespoke unit tests
> > different or unique per each python module, so if we want to adopt
> > python unit tests we should try to pick something that works for the
> > python tools in the kernel.
> >
> > Perhaps finding a way to integrate this with kunit so that you can use
> > "kunit run" and get python tests executed as well would make sense?
> > But.. then again this isn't kernel code so I'm not sure it makes sense
> > to conflate the tests with kernel unit tests.
>
> It shouldn't be hard to add it there - or to have a separate script
> to run python unittests.

Right. Some way to have all unit tests run is nice so that its easy to 
hook up into various CI processes. Sounds like you have a solid idea on 
that.

> That's said, some integration with kunit can be interesting
> to have it producing a KTAP output if needed by some CI.
That could also be interesting, as it would make it easier for other 
tooling to work with all the tests.

Personally I am not sure how useful that would be vs just making use of 
the unittest stuff provided as-is with python.