Re: [PATCH 0/1] Start conversion of PowerPC docs

On Fri, 08 Feb 2019 14:40:28 +1100
Michael Ellerman [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

- I don't think this should be a top-level directory full of docs; the top
  level is already rather overpopulated.  At worst, we should create an
  arch/ directory for architecture-specific docs.  

We currently have arch specific directories for arm, arm64, ia64, m68k,
nios2, openrisc, parisc, powerpc, s390, sh, sparc, x86, xtensa.

Do you mean they should all be moved to Documentation/arch ?

Over time I'm really trying to bring some organization to Documentation/,
and to have that reflected in an RST tree that looks like somebody actually
thought about it.  So yes, I would eventually like to see something like
Documentation/arch, just like we have arch/ in the top-level directory.

quoted

  I kind of think that
  this should be thought through a bit more, though, with an eye toward
  who the audience is.  Some of it is clearly developer documentation, and
  some of it is aimed at admins; ptrace.rst is user-space API stuff.
  Nobody ever welcomes me saying this, but we should really split things
  into the appropriate manuals according to audience.  

I don't think any of it's aimed at admins, but I haven't read every
word. I see it as aimed at kernel devs or people writing directly to the
kernel API, eg. gdb developers reading ptrace.rst.

If Documentation/ wants to be more user focused and nicely curated
perhaps we need arch/foo/docs/ for these developer centric docs?

Stuff for GDB developers is best placed in the userspace-api docbook; we're
trying to concentrate that there.  Stuff for kernel developers is a bit
more diffuse still; arch/foo/docs may end up being the best place for it in
the end, yes.

quoted

- It would be good to know how much of this stuff is still relevant.
  bootwrapper.txt hasn't been modified since it was added in 2008.  

It hasn't been modified but AFAIK it's still pretty much accurate and
definitely something we want to have documented.

That's fine for this (and all the others); I'm just hoping that somebody
has thought about it.  We're carrying a *lot* of dusty old stuff that, IMO,
can only serve to confuse those who read it.  If these files don't fall
into that category, that's great.

We support some hardware that is ~25 years old, so we have some old
documentation too, and I'd rather we didn't drop things just because
they're old.

I agree, as long as they remain correct and relevant.

quoted

- I'm glad you're adding SPDX lines, but do you know that the license is
  correct in each case?  It's best to be careful with such things.  

None of the files have licenses so I think we just fall back to COPYING
don't we? In which case GPL-2.0 is correct for all files.

That's often the best choice, though some people have resorted to some
rather more in-depth archeology to try to figure out what the original
author actually intended.  Again, I'm just asking so that we're sure it's
the best choice.

Thanks,

jon