Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional? Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for keeping the docs at the older version.
Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional? Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for keeping the docs at the older version.
There’s no specific reason for this. We setup Sphinx a while ago and only upgraded once to get markdown support (which is now the preferred format for new docs). The only constraint on upgrading to 2.x would be is it available on our minimum supported platform, or are we willing to have a higher minimum for generating the docs.
Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional? Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for keeping the docs at the older version.
There's no specific reason for this. We setup Sphinx a while ago and only upgraded once to get markdown support (which is now the preferred format for new docs). The only constraint on upgrading to 2.x would be is it available on our minimum supported platform, or are we willing to have a higher minimum for generating the docs.
There recently was a disscussion about this in phabricator (i think? i
can't seem to find it right now).
That version is way too new, it's not even in debian sid; enforcing it
would be limiting.
Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional? Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for keeping the docs at the older version.
There’s no specific reason for this. We setup Sphinx a while ago and only upgraded once to get markdown support (which is now the preferred format for new docs). The only constraint on upgrading to 2.x would be is it available on our minimum supported platform, or are we willing to have a higher minimum for generating the docs.
There recently was a disscussion about this in phabricator (i think? i
can’t seem to find it right now).
That version is way too new, it’s not even in debian sid; enforcing it
would be limiting.
Thanks Michael and Roman. That makes sense.
Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
>
>>
>> Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who
was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of
Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to
make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
>>
>>
>> I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me
posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a
couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
>>
>>
>> I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an
older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional?
Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of
priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for
keeping the docs at the older version.
>
>
> There's no specific reason for this. We setup Sphinx a while ago and
only upgraded once to get markdown support (which is now the preferred
format for new docs). The only constraint on upgrading to 2.x would be is
it available on our minimum supported platform, or are we willing to have a
higher minimum for generating the docs.
There recently was a disscussion about this in phabricator (i think? i
can't seem to find it right now).
That version is way too new, it's not even in debian sid; enforcing it
would be limiting.
Thanks Michael and Roman. That makes sense.
>>
>> Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs
page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit
message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
>
>
> Who committed it?
Sean Silva's listed as the commit author.
----
I had another question that I was going to start a new thread for, but I'll
just add here instead...
I was reviewing the commit history for this file in Github, and it appears
that it's been worked on for quite a while (as in years). Can someone
provide some context as to its purpose?
My guess, based on the commit history, is that it’s a “living” document
that folks contribute to for each upcoming release. Meaning it’s constantly
being updated. Is my understanding correct?
Yes, people add to this when they add changes that should be called out
during the next release. Each time we cut a branch for a release we
"reset" the version of this document on trunk to an empty one.
I don’t think our current situation for Markdown versus RST is good unfortunately. There are issues with the inter-file links between RST and Markdown documents, so we’re actually in the process of changing the new markdown docs for some of the LLVM binary tools to RST in the CommandGuide directory at least. Some related reviews:
Appreciate the insight. As part of my project, I’d like to figure out a way to implement a tagging scheme for the docs as I’m sure many topics will fall under multiple categories. The goal would be to provide a way for users to filter topics by category, topic/feature, etc.
Based on what you and others have said, I’ll need to take into consideration that some docs are written in markdown, others in rst.
Hi everyone. My name is DeForest Richards. I’m the technical writer who was selected to work on the LLVM project as part of the Google Season of Docs program. I’ll be helping to restructure the documentation page(s) to make it easier for new and existing users to navigate the LLVM docs.
I’m currently reviewing the existing docs, so you’ll probably see me posting questions over the next several weeks. That said, I do have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask right now…
I noticed that the LLVM Docs currently use Sphinx 1.7.6, which is an older version. (I believe 2.x is the latest version.) Is this intentional? Updating to the latest version of Sphinx is probably low on my list of priorities, but I was just curious if there was a specific reason for keeping the docs at the older version.
There’s no specific reason for this. We setup Sphinx a while ago and only upgraded once to get markdown support (which is now the preferred format for new docs). The only constraint on upgrading to 2.x would be is it available on our minimum supported platform, or are we willing to have a higher minimum for generating the docs.
There recently was a disscussion about this in phabricator (i think? i
can’t seem to find it right now).
That version is way too new, it’s not even in debian sid; enforcing it
would be limiting.
Thanks Michael and Roman. That makes sense.
Back in 2012, there was a commit that removed the sidebar from the Docs page. Does anyone know/remember why this was done? I checked the commit message but it’s fairly short and doesn’t provide much context.
Who committed it?
Sean Silva’s listed as the commit author.
I went back through my mail and found that in r170790 we observed that the sidebar resulted in a redundant table of contents (once from the main table of contents, one in the sidebar). So we removed the sidebar in r170803.
I couldn’t find online email archives going back that far, so I’ve attached a PDF printout of the thread.
This issue may have been exacerbated by our stylesheet/theme making things look ugly.
I’m thinking about suggesting that it be re-enabled, which is why I asked. But I need to do some more research as to how to configure it. As mentioned in the attached email thread, most topics already have a TOC listed at the top. I’d like the sidebar to instead have a static list of links (for example, links to the Community page, Getting Started, etc.), as well as a search bar. The goal would be to improve overall navigation of the site.