Cellular Network Infrastructure

I think it'd be best to add extra checks during VTY unit tests (like osmo-bsc/tests/vty_test_runner.py) to print "show online-help" and match it against reference.xml (osmo-bsc/doc/manuals/vty/bsc_vty_reference.xml).

This way we always make sure during gerrit time that xml file is updated accordingly.

What is the advantage of that compared to always generating the vty reference when building the pdfs? If we did the latter, then we don't need to have the reference.xml changed in the patches, and we don't need to remember to update the file.

Hi osmith , I think I don't understand your comment. Can you extend your idea?

• Having documentation changes together in same commit than code change, also meaning people will take more care that VTY defined function will have all proper strings in place.
• Having master documentation always up-to-date
• Not having to do yet another step during release which basically is cleaning up mess from other people done previously

pespin wrote:

Hi osmith , I think I don't understand your comment. Can you extend your idea?

Sure. What I meant was getting rid of the vty_reference.xml file entirely, and only generating it at build time. This is also how I understood the proposal in #3695.

I see several advantatges about checking during gerrit verification (for programs that support vty_tests):

• Having documentation changes together in same commit than code change, also meaning people will take more care that VTY defined function will have all proper strings in place.

I get this point, if we did generate vty_reference.xml on demand only, nobody would look at how it changes during code review.

• Having master documentation always up-to-date

This would also be the case if we generate the vty_reference.xml on demand.

• Not having to do yet another step during release which basically is cleaning up mess from other people done previously

There would be no need for that either.

I think it's really bad practise to require the execution of the program at
build time. Think of cross-compilation situations, where certainly you
do want to generate manuals, but you cannot [realistically, generically]
execute the just-built program at build time as it's for the target
architecture, not the architecture of your host.

True, I did not think of the cross-compilation case. With that in mind, I guess doing it like Pau suggested would be the best way, ensuring that the xml file is always up-to-date with CI.

I've thought about how one would implement the check in gerrit together with the regen_doc.sh scripts that daniel created. Here's what I came up with (not adding as checklist, because this is not assigned to me):

• remove git hashes from generated xml files (so they don't need to be adjusted after every unrelated patch update during review process)
• docker-playground.git: do git checkout for repositories from gerrit, not from git.osmocom.org (so we will have git commits present, that are in review state and not yet in master)
• docker-playground.git: scripts/regen_doc.sh: add VERIFY environment variable, and when it is set, verify if the xml files changed after regenerating them (exit with 1 on change)
• osmo-*.git: ./contrib/jenkins.sh: if WITH_MANUALS=1 is set, also run VERIFY=1 regen_doc.sh

pespin: would you mind if I take this issue?

osmith all yours, hearing that makes me really happy!

Thanks for pointing that out, I was not part of that meeting.