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Subject: Re: Sphinx version dependencies?
From:   Markus Heiser <markus.heiser@darmarit.de>
To:     "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc:     "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Date:   Fri, 20 Jul 2018 18:00:28 +0200
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Am Freitag, den 20.07.2018, 10:52 -0400 schrieb Theodore Y. Ts'o:
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 03:45:37PM +0200, Markus Heiser wrote:
> > Am Freitag, den 20.07.2018, 09:12 -0400 schrieb Theodore Y. Ts'o:
> > > I'm not entirely sure what's the best approach.  Right now I just want
> > > to understand --- do I have to make ext4.rst work against one, or many
> > > versions of Sphinx?  And which version(s) of Sphinx do I need to
> > > concern myself with?  If that turns out to be an onerous burden, I'm
> > > sure I won't be the only person complaining.  :-)
> > 
> > In that case ...
> > 
> > > But when I did that, Sphinx had heartburn over the ext4.rst file.
> > > 
> > >     ./include/linux/spi/spi.h:373: ERROR: Unexpected indentation.
> > >     /usr/projects/linux/ext4/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/ext4.rst:139: ERROR: Malformed table.
> > >     Column span alignment problem in table line 5.
> > 
> > ... its clear; the table was malformed. A markup error which is not detected
> > by older versions of docutils (very special case).
> 
> ... except that newer verions are A-OK with it.  Apparently 1.3.x was
> OK with it, and 1.6.x and 1.7.x were ok with it.  ***ONLY*** Sphinx
> 1.4.9 blew up on the "malformed table".

Are you sure that it was not due to the docutils version?
I can't reproduce it but the table parser is a part of docutils.

> 
> So in this case, Darrick has come up with a patch that is makes it OK
> with 1.4.9 without breaking on 1.7.5 --- and obviously, doing
> something that makes it broadly portable is the right thing.

Right, fix it by the markup .. is what I recommend.

> I'm asking a larger question, which is moving forward, which is more
> important?  Make it work with Sphinx 1.4.9?  Or making it Sphinx work
> with Sphinx 1.7.5?
> 
> And should we change Documentation/sphinx/requirements.txt to require
> something newer, such as Sphinx 1.7.5?  And should we require that
> Ubuntu 18.04 which is using Sphinx 1.6.8 use a virtualenv and use
> download Sphinx 1.6.8?

The requirements.txt came from commit fb947f3f47 [1] (inital 24071ac1a6).
Where Jon and Mauro decided to tag explicit versions ...

docutils==0.12
Sphinx==1.4.9
sphinx_rtd_theme

Maybe it is time to switch to something like .. ?

Sphinx>=1.4.9
sphinx_rtd_theme

I don't know. Mauro has tested on many distros, he has more experience with
the wide range of distros then I.

[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=fb947f3f47

> 
> My understanding that the Sphinx developers make no guarantees that if
> we follow some external, version-indepedent spec, that it will work on
> Sphinx version N, as well as Sphinx version N+1.  (In the ideal world,
> if there was such an independent spec for .rst format files, and a
> compliant .rst file doesn't work for Sphinx version N, it's a bug, and
> we should expect somebody --- perhaps the Distro's --- to backport the
> fix from Sphinx version N+1 to Sphinx version N.)  E.g., is there an
> equivalent for ANSI C 1999 standard for .rst files?

The reST markup is specified here:

 http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html

but the (last) example of the simple table does not match your "1.4.9"
experience.

-- Markus --


> 
> 		       	      	   	    - Ted