mbox series

[RFC,v2,0/3] Documentation: Debugging guide

Message ID 20240529-b4-media_docs_improve-v2-0-66318b2da726@collabora.com (mailing list archive)
Headers
Series Documentation: Debugging guide |

Message

Sebastian Fricke Sept. 24, 2024, 8:45 a.m. UTC 
  The RFC contains:
- a general debugging guide split into debugging for driver developers and
  debugging from userspace
- a new summary page for all media related documentation. This is inspired by
  other subsystems, which first of all allows a user to find the subsystem
  under the subsystems page and secondly eases general navigation through the
  documentation that is sprinkled onto multiple places.
- a guide on how to debug code in the media subsystem, which points to the
  parts of the general documentation and adds own routines.

WHY do we need this?
--------------------

For anyone without years of experience in the Linux kernel, knowing which tool
to use or even which tools are available is not as straightforward as some
senior developers might perceive.
We realized that there is a general need for a kind of "start page", that
allows especially beginners to get up-to-speed with the codebase and the
documentation. The documentation in particular is currently quite hard to navigate
as you mostly have to know what you are searching for to find it.

WHAT do we cover?
-----------------

The document is structured into two sections:

1. A problem-focused approach: This means, a developer facing an issue matching
one of the given examples, will find suggestions for how to approach that
problem (e.g. which tool to use) in this section
2. A tool-focused approach: This sections highlights the available tools, with
comparisions between the tools if sensible. The goal of this work is
**duplicate as little as possible** from the existing documentation and
instead provide a rough overview that provides:
    - A link to the actual documentation
    - A minimal example for how it can be used (from a media perspective,
      if the usage isn't absolutely trivial like printk)
    - A rational for why it should be used

To: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-media@vger.kernel.org
Cc: laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com
Cc: hverkuil-cisco@xs4all.nl
Cc: mauro.chehab@linux.intel.com
Cc: kernel@collabora.com
Cc: bob.beckett@collabora.com
Cc: nicolas.dufresne@collabora.com
Signed-off-by: Sebastian Fricke <sebastian.fricke@collabora.com>

---
Changes in v2:
- Split the media debugging guide into a general and a media specific guide,
  which contains mostly references to the general guide and a few media
  specific aspects.
- Fill out TBD sections
- Add device coredump section

---
Sebastian Fricke (3):
      docs: media: Create separate documentation folder for media
      docs: Add guides section for debugging
      docs: media: Debugging guide for the media subsystem

 .../driver_development_debugging_guide.rst         | 193 +++++++++++++++
 Documentation/debugging/index.rst                  |  66 +++++
 .../debugging/userspace_debugging_guide.rst        | 269 +++++++++++++++++++++
 Documentation/index.rst                            |   2 +
 Documentation/media/guides/debugging_issues.rst    | 174 +++++++++++++
 Documentation/media/guides/index.rst               |  11 +
 Documentation/media/index.rst                      |  20 ++
 Documentation/subsystem-apis.rst                   |   1 +
 8 files changed, 736 insertions(+)
---
base-commit: 68a72104cbcf38ad16500216e213fa4eb21c4be2
change-id: 20240529-b4-media_docs_improve-79ea2d480483

Best regards,