TL;DR - We should update the bot(s) responsible for building the LLVM documentation so that they use recommonmark 0.5.0, and apply https://reviews.llvm.org/D63211.
Full context:
I recently started trying to build the sphinx docs. However, a change by Jordan (r363100) resulted in me no longer being able to build them, even though the build bots were green and he could build them himself. After some digging, it looks like it’s an issue with the latest version of the recommonmark python module. I verified that I don’t see the issue with v0.4.0, but do with v0.5.0. The sphinx version doesn’t seem to make any difference.
I could downgrade my module version (and have temporarily done so). However, that leads to another issue: the links to llvm-symbolizer’s page in https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/llvm-addr2line.html are broken when building with 0.4.0. This can be fixed by changing the markdown doc to explicitly specify “.html” in the link, but this precise change is what breaks 0.5.0 (which otherwise produces working links in the llvm-addr2line doc). I think we should update the build bots version of recommonmark. Since this would cause the build to break, we should simultaneously (or more exactly slightly before) apply the patch in https://reviews.llvm.org/D63211, which fixes the warning that I am seeing with 0.5.0.
I’ve included a couple of people I know to be involved with either the website or the build bots. Sorry if it’s misdirected!
(+cc gribozavr, maintainer of gribozavr3 buildslave)
I played around with this yesterday and today (I had to head out before I could reply on D63211).
The recommonmark version is what matters most, but the Sphinx version isn’t completely irrelevant. For instance, the current way we install the recommonmark module is deprecated in >1.8 and removed in 3.0 (trunk, seems to be unreleased): http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/markdown.html. However, when I change registration that way, I get errors that “extension ‘recommonmark’ has no setup() function”.
(This is tangential to the original problem, but I note it because if you pull Sphinx from trunk and try to build llvm docs, it will not work because of this. If possible, we should try to deal with it now so we only have to reconfigure buildbots once)
My suggested approach (no buildbot breakages):
Change broken links between md<->rst files to plain html links (annoying, but temporary)
Updated recommonmark on buildbots to 0.5.0 (presumably it’s at <= 0.4.0 on build bots, but I can’t find a way to verify this)
Change html links back to normal markdown syntax
Update Sphinx to >1.8 (and < 3.0) (possibly waiting until it hits whatever stable repo the buildbot installs from)
Switch the registration method of recommonmark in conf.py to the non-deprecated way
Upgrading to Sphinx >= 3.0 will not be a problem now
(+cc gribozavr, maintainer of gribozavr3 buildslave)
I played around with this yesterday and today (I had to head out before I could reply on D63211).
The recommonmark version is what matters most, but the Sphinx version isn’t completely irrelevant. For instance, the current way we install the recommonmark module is deprecated in >1.8 and removed in 3.0 (trunk, seems to be unreleased): http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/markdown.html. However, when I change registration that way, I get errors that “extension ‘recommonmark’ has no setup() function”.
To be clear: this error is w/ Sphinx 1.7.5 + recommonmark 0.5.0. There is no error here w/ Sphinx >= 1.8.
(This is tangential to the original problem, but I note it because if you pull Sphinx from trunk and try to build llvm docs, it will not work because of this. If possible, we should try to deal with it now so we only have to reconfigure buildbots once)
My suggested approach (no buildbot breakages):
Change broken links between md<->rst files to plain html links (annoying, but temporary)
Thanks for bringing this up. I am reluctant to update to recommonmark
= 0.4.0, because it is not available in any Ubuntu version, Debian
Testing or even Debian Unstable.
While we could do something custom on the buildbot, I think it would
be a disservice for our users to use a library that is not packaged in
modern operating systems yet.
+1 to what Roman said. What I meant is that recommonmark 0.5.0 is not
available in the distribution itself, and PIP is not an OS-endorsed
package manager.