Re: Sphinx pre v3 -- removing support

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

Adam Turner <aaturnerpython@outlook.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I was pointed in the direction of this mailing list by Jani Nikula in
> [1]_, who said:
>
>> Thanks for the ping. I was heavily involved in the early days of
>> converting the kernel to use Sphinx, but I haven't closely followed
>> the recent developments. Basically I think I'd also be inclined to
>> push for much higher minimum Sphinx version requirements than what
>> the kernel currently has. The minimum at the moment is v1.7.9 
>> (or v2.4.4 for PDF). It's difficult to maintain support for a wide
>> range of Sphinx versions. Perhaps the best bet would be to mail the
>> kernel documentation list at linux-doc@vger.kernel.org and Cc 
>> Jonathan Corbet corbet@lwn.net to try to reach an understanding on
>> the recommended minimum version and version ranges that makes sense
>> for both parties to support. HTH.
>
> This email is an attempt to do that. 
>
> From Sphinx's perspective, we'd like to remove long-deprecated code.
> What is a good solution here for both sides? The intertial option is
> for us to delay the deprecation by another major version (removal is
> currently scheduled for Sphinx 6 (2023-05), and we are currently 
> releasing a major version every May.
>
> Jani reports that you still require Sphinx 1.7.9 -- I have no 
> investment in the documentation development of the kernel, but he
> rightly notes that is quite an old version -- released 3 years and 9
> months ago.
>
> Please would you let me know if there is anything required on our
> (Sphinx's) end that would let us drop the "pre v3" support gracefully.

We've been meaning to raise the minimum version for a bit.  Going to v3
might be a bit of a stretch, though.  I still do most of my test builds
with 2.4.3 just because Sphinx got so....much........slower with 3.0.
I've not yet had a chance to try out 5.0 to see if that helps things,
that's on my list to do soon.

Thanks,

jon