On 23/01/2024 05:14, Akira Yokosawa wrote:
Hi all,
Annoyingly, installing Sphinx 2.4.4 using requirements.txt of v6.8-rc1
ends up in a run-time error which looks similar to the one Vegard
reported in commit f4cac0f74658 ("Documentation: constrain alabaster
package to older versions").
The new error is from sphinxcontrib.applehelp which reads:
Sphinx version error:
The sphinxcontrib.applehelp extension used by this project needs
at least Sphinx v5.0; it therefore cannot be built with this version.
Do we want to continue whack-a-mole update for Sphinx 2.4.4?
Thanks, Akira
Can we have requirements(-latest).txt and requirements-2.4.4.txt?
The thing is, we are not using new features of Sphinx in the kernel
docs. We don't fundamentally require a new version in any of our .rst
files or markup, these aren't security issues being fixed or bugs that
we've run into, the problem is purely that we are using a software
ecosystem that apparently has no restraint when it comes to breaking
their users.
My issue with _requiring_ newer versions of Sphinx is the fact that they
have performance regressions: 4.3.2 takes 3x longer to run than 2.4.4 on
my laptop. You need to go all the way up to 7.x in order to back to
reasonable performance -- and that will probably be too new to support
most of the distro-packaged Sphinxes.
If we have two or more requirements*.txt files, we could just freeze ALL
the dependencies for 2.4.4 at versions that we know to work. That should
stop the whack-a-mole for that version. And then we don't have to force
everybody on to newer/slower versions.
I mean, I can also maintain my own requirements-2.4.4.txt on my local
filesystem but I think it's better to do the right thing out of the box
for all users, no? Maybe we should also add in warnings about the
known-slow Sphinx versions.
Vegard
