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authorYacine Belkadi <yacine.belkadi.1@gmail.com>2012-11-26 22:21:23 +0100
committerJiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>2012-11-27 21:08:57 +0100
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Kernel-doc: Convention: Use a "Return" section to describe return values
Non-void functions should describe their return values in their kernel-doc comments. Currently, some don't, others do in various forms. For example: * Return the result. * Return: The result. * Returns the result. * Returns: the result. * Return Value: The result. * @return: the result. * This function returns the result. * It will return the result. Defining a convention would improve consistency of kernel-doc comments. It would also help scripts/kernel-doc identify the text describing the return value of a function. Thus allowing additional checks on the comments, and suitable highlighting in the generated docs (man pages, html, etc). So, as a convention, use a section named "Return" to describe the return value of a function. Signed-off-by: Yacine Belkadi <yacine.belkadi.1@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt13
1 files changed, 10 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt b/Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
index 3d8a97747f77..99b57abddf8a 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
@@ -64,6 +64,8 @@ Example kernel-doc function comment:
* comment lines.
*
* The longer description can have multiple paragraphs.
+ *
+ * Return: Describe the return value of foobar.
*/
The short description following the subject can span multiple lines
@@ -78,6 +80,8 @@ If a function parameter is "..." (varargs), it should be listed in
kernel-doc notation as:
* @...: description
+The return value, if any, should be described in a dedicated section
+named "Return".
Example kernel-doc data structure comment.
@@ -222,6 +226,9 @@ only a "*").
"section header:" names must be unique per function (or struct,
union, typedef, enum).
+Use the section header "Return" for sections describing the return value
+of a function.
+
Avoid putting a spurious blank line after the function name, or else the
description will be repeated!
@@ -237,21 +244,21 @@ patterns, which are highlighted appropriately.
NOTE 1: The multi-line descriptive text you provide does *not* recognize
line breaks, so if you try to format some text nicely, as in:
- Return codes
+ Return:
0 - cool
1 - invalid arg
2 - out of memory
this will all run together and produce:
- Return codes 0 - cool 1 - invalid arg 2 - out of memory
+ Return: 0 - cool 1 - invalid arg 2 - out of memory
NOTE 2: If the descriptive text you provide has lines that begin with
some phrase followed by a colon, each of those phrases will be taken as
a new section heading, which means you should similarly try to avoid text
like:
- Return codes:
+ Return:
0: cool
1: invalid arg
2: out of memory