From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4266 invoked by alias); 9 Nov 2009 19:39:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 4258 invoked by uid 22791); 9 Nov 2009 19:39:41 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail.codesourcery.com (HELO mail.codesourcery.com) (38.113.113.100) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:39:33 +0000 Received: (qmail 25188 invoked from network); 9 Nov 2009 19:39:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO orlando) (pedro@127.0.0.2) by mail.codesourcery.com with ESMTPA; 9 Nov 2009 19:39:32 -0000 From: Pedro Alves To: gdb@sourceware.org Subject: Re: updates on the GDB online documentation Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:19:00 -0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 Cc: Joel Brobecker References: <20091109173300.GQ22192@adacore.com> In-Reply-To: <20091109173300.GQ22192@adacore.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200911091939.30934.pedro@codesourcery.com> X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2009-11/txt/msg00099.txt.bz2 On Monday 09 November 2009 17:33:00, Joel Brobecker wrote: > Doug Evans remarked that one of the issues with the texi2html is that > it uses numbers in its URLs, making the URLs unstable over time. > For instance: >=20 > =A0 =A0 http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb_5.html#SEC21 >=20 > Switching back to using makeinfo will improve the situation, as > the HTML files are now named using the node name, or the chapter/name > section (not sure which): >=20 > =A0 =A0 Automatic-Overlay-Debugging.html >=20 > I will try to commit this change tomorrow. I don't object to this, but I want to note that IMO, this sidesteps a more fundamental problem that is: 1 - currently sources documentation is too prominent. People tend to link to current development sources, without realizing it, when they should be linking to a particular release's docs, and those should be stable forever (or as much as possible anyway), but aren't. 2 - As I noted in the other email, an url like: http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/6.8/gdb_5.html#SEC21 , would never have this stableness problem, even if we switched docs of newer releases to makeinfo or whatever tool we find is better in 2020. That is, an absolute "6.8", not "previous release" or some other non-absolute term. If we do decide to keep older manuals up in the webpage (as I hope we do), we can't also assume that newer makeinfo/texinfo's grok older manuals correctly. Note we shouldn't need that --- once a manual is upload, it should not need regenerating again. --=20 Pedro Alves