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Date:   Fri, 27 Mar 2020 09:50:22 -0700
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
To:     Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc:     Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@linux.intel.com>,
        peter@bikeshed.quignogs.org.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/1] Compactly make code examples into literal blocks
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On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 10:41:26AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:28:54 +0200
> Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> > IMHO the real problem is kernel-doc doing too much preprocessing on the
> > input, preventing us from doing what would be the sensible thing in
> > rst. The more we try to fix the problem by adding more kernel-doc
> > processing, the further we dig ourselves into this hole.
> > 
> > If kernel-doc didn't have its own notion of section headers, such as
> > "example:", we wouldn't have this problem to begin with. We could just
> > use the usual rst construct; "example::" followed by an indented block.
> > 
> > I'm not going to stand in the way of the patch, but I'm telling you,
> > this is going to get harder, not easier, on this path.
> 
> I agree with you in principle.  The problem, of course, is that this is a
> legacy gift from before the RST days and it will be hard to change.
> 
> A quick grep shows that the pattern:
> 
> 	* Example:
> 
> appears nearly 100 times in current kernels.  It is not inconceivable to
> make a push to get rid of all of those, turning them into ordinary RST
> syntax - especially since not all of those are actually kerneldoc
> comments.
> 
> The same quick grep says that "returns?:" appears about 10,000 times.
> *That* will be painful to change, and I can only imagine that some
> resistance would have to be overcome at some point.
> 
> So what do folks think we should do? :)

Let me just check I understand Jani's proposal here.  You want to change

* Return: Number of pages, or negative errno on failure

to

* Return
* ~~~~~~
* Number of pages, or negative errno on failure

If so, I oppose such an increase in verbosity and I think most others
would too.  If not, please let me know what you're actually proposing ;-)