Re: [PATCH 04/11] doc: use asciidoctor to build man pages directly

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
To: "Martin Ågren" <martin.agren@gmail.com>,
	"Felipe Contreras" <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: "Git Mailing List" <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	"brian m . carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>,
	"Jeff King" <peff@peff.net>,
	"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	"Bagas Sanjaya" <bagasdotme@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/11] doc: use asciidoctor to build man pages directly
Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 15:26:14 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <609edce68cff1_43127208aa@natae.notmuch> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAN0heSpX53tK8Z4XSx4sp79b+XWKZg5+ABW8pmzBSHPZ+qy+oQ@mail.gmail.com>

Martin Ågren wrote:
> On Fri, 14 May 2021 at 14:14, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > There's no need to use xmlto to build the man pages when modern
> > asciidoctor can do it by itself.
> >
> > This new mode will be active only when USE_ASCIIDOCTOR is set.
> 
> May I suggest incorporating something more like brian's patch here [1],
> so that there's a separate knob for this thing?

Sure. Do you agree with the name? (USE_ASCIIDOCTOR_MANPAGE)

> The commit message is short on details and makes it sound like this is
> it, we're done. But then there are several patches to fix up things.
> Which is a good approach, so that this patch doesn't need to do several
> things at once. This commit message could say something about it, e.g.,
> 
>   The doc-diff here [which doc-diff? see below] is a XYZ-line diff.
>   Large parts of this difference will be addressed in the following
>   patches.

Right. I'll include that.

> About the use of doc-diff: If this commit introduces a new knob rather
> than taking over USE_ASCIIDOCTOR=Yes, the next patch could be Peff's
> patch to doc-diff that compares the two asciidoctor approaches [2], and
> then the next few patches could diff between them. That would get the
> asciidoc-vs-asciidoctor differences out of the way, so you can focus on
> asciidoctor-vs-asciidoctor.

You mean [1]. I think that belongs on the same patch. It's important
that if we do have a new switch, doc-diff is able to use it.

However, I personally don't need such switch, I want to compare
asciidoc-vs-asciidoctor-manpage wholesale.

I want to see *all* the diffs.

> With a separate knob, it would feel like a lot easier decision to take
> something like this. There are over 11000 lines in the doc-diff after
> applying your series, and there's the missing boldness for literals.
> Maybe those differences are all great (I would be missing the bold
> literals, though). If this series doesn't affect someone using
> "vanilla" USE_ASCIIDOCTOR=Yes, we could let this thing cook in master
> and work incrementally on top.

I did notice the missing boldness for literals, and I know how to fix
it. It's a small hack. I also noticed a few small rendering issues.

But from my point of view after my patches this is 98% done. Most of the
remaining diffs are fine, for example:

-GIT-CHECK-REF-FOR(1)              Git Manual              GIT-CHECK-REF-FOR(1)
+GIT-CHECK-REF-FORMAT(1)           Git Manual           GIT-CHECK-REF-FORMAT(1)

That's clearly a bug in asciidoc+docbook. Others are things asciidoctor
renders better, and most are whitespace noise.

Cheers.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/YJt1%2FDO1cXNTRNxK@coredump.intra.peff.net/

-- 
Felipe Contreras