Re: [RFC PATCH v2 06/10] MAINTAINERS: Support referencing test docs in V:

[Nikolai Kondrashov <Nikolai.Kondrashov@redhat.com>]

On 12/6/23 10:03, David Gow wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 at 02:45, Nikolai Kondrashov
> <Nikolai.Kondrashov@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> Support referencing test suite documentation in the V: entries of
>> MAINTAINERS file. Use the '*<name>' syntax (like C pointer dereference),
>> where '<name>' is a second-level heading in the new
>> Documentation/process/tests.rst file, with the suite's description.
>> This syntax allows distinguishing the references from test commands.
 >
> I like the idea here, but wonder whether it makes sense to put all of
> these tests into a single 'tests.rst' file. There's already lots of
> existing documentation scattered around the tree, and while keeping
> all of the testing information in one place does have advantages, I
> think there's a lot to be said for keeping subsystem-specific test
> docs alongside the rest of the documentation for the subsystem itself.
> And it'd be less work, as the docs are already there.
> 
> So, could we just make this a path under Documentation/ (possibly with
> an #anchor if we need to reference just one part of a file)?
> 
> e.g., something like these, all of which are existing docs:
> V: *Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst#Tests
> or
> V: *Dcoumentation/RCU/torture.rst
> or
> V: *Documentation/gpu/automated_testing.rst
> or
> V: *Documentation/process/maintainer-kvm-x86.rst#Testing
> 
> (We could even get rid of the '*' and just use 'Documentation/' as a
> prefix, or the executable bit on the file, or similar to distinguish
> these from scripts.)
> 
> If we wanted to be very brave, we could extend this further to
> arbitrary webpages, like:
> V: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/xfs/xfstests-dev.git/tree/README

Sure, having a filename (in a specific directory) or a just piece of path in 
the source (sub)tree would work too. The idea of single file was mostly to 
make it easier to access a *catalog* of all tests in a single file with small 
bits of introductory documentation, pointing to the more detailed 
documentation (wherever you prefer it to be) from there.

URLs would work as well for pointing to the docs, but they become somewhat 
more cumbersome and error-prone for use in Tested-with: tags (if we would like 
them), just because of their length and complexity. If we won't care for that, 
it's not a problem.

However, overall, I would be cautious multiplying the ways tests can be 
specified in V: entries (and Tested-with: tags), as that could quickly become 
unwieldy and confusing for humans, who are expected to be interpreting and 
writing them. Especially if the syntax could potentially be ambiguous.

Nick