make SPHINXREFMAP=intersphinx_mapping.py htmldocs where intersphinx_mapping.py would be a file containing intersphinx configuration. We would add a default map at Documentation/, while letting it to be overridden if some subsystem has different requirements or is using a different CSS tamplate or not using alabaster. > > I think the main factor in that should be whether it makes sense from > > overall documentation standpoint, not the technical details. Agreed. > > Having several books might make sense. It might even be helpful in > > organizing the documentation by audiences. But having the granularity of > > SPHINXDIRS with that would be overkill. On the contrary. SPHINXDIRS granuarity is very important for scenario (3). > > And there needs to be a book to > > bring them together, and link to the other books, acting as the landing > > page. > > Well, I think that the number of existing directories needs to be > reduced rather further. I made progress in that direction by coalescing > all the arch docs under Documentation/arch/. I would like to do > something similar with all the device-specific docs, creating > Documentation/devices/. Then we start to get to a reasonable number of > books. I don't think reducing the number of books should be the goal, but, instead, to have them with a clear and coherent organization with focus on the audience that will be actually using them. After reorg, we may have less books. That's fine. But it is also fine if we end with more books. I lost the battle years ago, but I still believe that, at least for some subsystems like media, i2c, DRM, security and others, a subsystem-specific book could be better. After all, the audience for such subsystems is very specialized. > > I believe it should be possible to generate the intersphinx inventory > > without generating the full html or pdf documentation. So I don't think > > it's actually two complete docs builds. It might speed things up to have > > a number of independent documentation builds. > > That's a good point, I hadn't looked into that part. The builder phase > takes a lot of the time, if that could be cut out things would go > faster. Indeed, but we need to double check if .doctree cache expiration will happen the right way for all books affected by a partial build. During this merge window, I sent a RFC patch in the middle of a comment with a conf.py logic to detect Sphinx cache expiration. I remember I added a comment asking if we should upstream it or not, but, as nobody answered, I ended forgetting about it. If we're willing to experiment with that, I recommend looking on such patch and add a variant of it, enabled via V=1 or via some debug parameter. The goal would be to check if a change on a file will ensure that all books using it will have cache expiration and be rebuilt. > > As to the working references, IIUC partial builds with SPHINXDIRS > > doesn't get that part right if there are references outside of the > > designated dirs, leading to warnings. > > That is true. My point though is that, to get the references right with > a *full* build, a two-pass approach is needed though, as you suggest, > perhaps the first pass could be faster. How fast? during development time, SPHINXDIRS means a couple of seconds: $ make clean; time make SPHINXDIRS="peci" htmldocs ... real 0m1,373s user 0m1,348s Even more complex builds, even when picking more than one book, like this: $ make clean; time make SPHINXDIRS="driver-api/media/ userspace-api/media/" htmldocs ... real 0m11,801s user 0m31,381s sys 0m6,880s it still fits at the seconds range. Can interphinx first pass have a similar build time? Thanks, Mauro
