Re: [PATCH] build: Re-introduce an 'info' target to build a Texinfo manual.

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 11:47:59AM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Mar 2024 at 03:05, Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> >
> > This reinstates
> > <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2020-09/msg09228.html>,
> > which was committed at some point but reverted many years later in
> > cleanups that followed the migration from Texinfo sources to the
> > ReStructuredText (RST) format.  It's still nice to leave the option for
> > users to easily generate a QEMU manual in the Texinfo format, taking
> > advantage of the Sphinx texinfo backend.
> 
> As far as I can tell, we never committed that patch, because
> (as noted in the discussion there) we don't particularly want
> to generate texinfo output (and also because it was missing a
> signed-off-by line). So this isn't a regression: we've never
> generated info docs since we switched away from texinfo to
> rst as our source format.
> 
> I don't think my position personally has changed on this one
> since your previous patch submission. Other QEMU developers
> are welcome to weigh in and disagree with me.

I tend to agree with your point in that thread above. It is already
a big enough burden for maintainers to ensure that the HTML output
for their docs is rendered effectively. Adding an 'info' docs output
increases that burden for negligible benefit. HTML is the most
broadly consumable docs format, so it makes sense to focus our effort
on that.

With regards,
Daniel
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