Re: [PATCH 01/11] doc: allow the user to provide ASCIIDOC_EXTRA

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, "Martin Ågren" <martin.agren@gmail.com>,
	"brian m . carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>,
	"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/11] doc: allow the user to provide ASCIIDOC_EXTRA
Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 04:57:49 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YKIwDTQI3sBXu+7W@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <609fbafc73fcd_e173a208f4@natae.notmuch>

On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 07:13:48AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:

> Jeff King wrote:
> > On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 05:32:08AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 07:14:25AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Without `override` all additions will be ignored by make.
> > > 
> > > That's true of all of our Makefile variables. Is there a particular
> > > reason to give this one special treatment?
> > 
> > To go into further detail: usually we distinguish variables we use
> > internally from user-facing ones, and include the latter in the former.
> > I see a later patch wants to start passing ASCIIDOC_EXTRA on the
> > command-line, and we'd use two variables for that.
> 
> Well, it's not exactly user-facing; it's only needed for doc-diff.

It's meant for the caller of "make". Your proposed use is within
doc-diff, but any user running "make ASCIIDOC_EXTRA=foo" would see the
different behavior.

> Would TEST_ASCIIDOC_EXTRA make sense?

I'd probably call it ASCIIDOC_FLAGS (like we have CFLAGS and LDFLAGS
that are meant for users to inform us of extra flags they'd like
passed).

Of course that may not solve your problem in a sense; if you want
doc-diff to override it, then that might conflict with a theoretical
ASCIIDOC_FLAGS somebody set in their config.mak (but we really are in
the realm of hypothetical here).

-Peff