[U-Boot] KernelDoc

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Marek,

In message <201209261726.55611.marex at denx.de> you wrote:
> 
> > - Will we make this mandatory?  So that we will reject all new code
> >   that is not documented according to kernel-doc rules?
> 
> Yes please, make it mandatory. Otherwise people won't obey and the documentation 
> will suffer ... and all this would be meaningless.
> 
> > - If so, what does that mean for patches that touch existing code?
> 
> Ask the current custodian to annotate their code.

Judge from previous experience: how well will this work?  And what do
we do if it doesn't work?  Or if you want to get your critical bug fix
in now, but the custodian promises a doc patch for half a year later?

> >   If I change the major part of an existing function (without changing
> >   it's calling interface), am I obligued to add kernel-doc comments?
> 
> Yes. Even though major vs. minor change seems pretty vague, common sense shall 
> be applied here.
> 
> >   If I change the calling interface, must I add documentation then?
> 
> Of course, yes.

Didn't we agree that we want to make it easier for people to
contribute code?  If somebody who just wants to improve a small detail
in the code is now not only enforced to fix the coding style, but
_also_ document the whole file, this will probably not exactly attract
new contributors.


> > - What sort of documentation do we generate?
> 
> None for starters, since it will be incomplete. I would postpone the generation 
> as a stage 2 here.

Don't, that will fire back later, then.

> > How can we make clear
> >   that for a long, long time it will cover only a small fraction of
> >   the actual code, eventually even parts of some source files?
> 
> Pardon me, but I don't follow here. It will certainly for a while cover only 
> small parts of U-Boot code. We need something like "kernel-janitors" here :-)

I agree.  We could need all kind of help for at least a dozen of
tasks.  Where do we find these?  And for free?

> > - Who will be responsible for maintaining the documentation?
> 
> I believe for now we should only focus on using this as a standardized method of 
> anotating functions. The reviewer of the patch shall check if the patch is 
> correct incl. the documentation, as usual.

And missing or incorrect documentation would cause the patch to be
rejected?


Can such checking (all functions have a kernel-doc comment, which
covers the return value and all arguments) be done automatically, say
throuch checkpatch?


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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