gcc/configure.ac uses DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL="https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/" as the default documentation root. That is great for the trunk, but I'm not convinced it is the right thing for release branches. The online docs at that location are updated daily from the trunk, while the release branches will be supported for ~ 3 years, during which a lot of the URLs hardcoded into the releases or snapshots on release branches might get removed, the documentation changed etc. Another option would be to switch that default on release branches to docrootbase= case "$gcc_version" in *.[123456].0) docrootbase="$gcc_version/";; *.[123456].1) docrootbase="`echo $gcc_version | sed 's/1$/0$/'`/";; esac DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL="https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/$docrootbase" or so. That has the advantage that the URLs will reflect the corresponding release's stable documentation for the 3 years (or even after it goes out of support). The disadvantage is that unlike the trunk online docs regenerated every day, the release onlinedocs are only created when release is made. So, say 14.1.0 docs will be correct, but if something in the docs or in the options is changed in 14.1.1 between 14.1.0 and 14.2.0, the URLs on the release branches might be stale.
Marking this as P1 because I think we need to decide what to do before the release.
IMO keeping https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/ is worse than making it release specific.
We could also make changing it part of branching.html and have additional directories without minor/patchlevel version, thus https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14/ where we could autogenerate docs in more often (but then 14.1.0 may point to stale info when gcc-14/ is updated from the branch). Similar issues exist of course for older snapshot builds of trunk. Not sure if this is all well thought through given the somewhat unstable URIs we produce. The handling of changes.html references is much more sensible.
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The master branch has been updated by Jakub Jelinek <jakub@gcc.gnu.org>: https://gcc.gnu.org/g:57056146f4ffc5ea347c03e37e1e2c7cd99261d0 commit r14-10007-g57056146f4ffc5ea347c03e37e1e2c7cd99261d0 Author: Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> Date: Wed Apr 17 16:17:22 2024 +0200 DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL vs. release branches [PR114738] Starting with GCC 14 we have the nice URLification of the options printed in diagnostics, say for in test.c:4:23: warning: format â%dâ expects argument of type âintâ, but argument 2 has type âlong intâ [-Wformat=] the -Wformat= is underlined in some terminals and hovering on it shows https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Warning-Options.html#index-Wformat link. This works nicely on the GCC trunk, where the online documentation is regenerated every day from a cron job and more importantly, people rarely use the trunk snapshots for too long, so it is unlikely that further changes in the documentation will make too many links stale, because users will simply regularly update to newer snapshots. I think it doesn't work properly on release branches though. Some users only use the relased versions (i.e. MAJOR.MINOR.0) from tarballs but can use them for a couple of years, others use snapshots from the release branches, but again they could be in use for months or years and the above mentioned online docs which represent just the GCC trunk might diverge significantly. Now, for the relases we always publish also online docs for the release, which unlike the trunk online docs will not change further, under e.g. https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.1.0/gcc/Warning-Options.html#index-Wformat or https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.2.0/gcc/Warning-Options.html#index-Wformat etc. So, I think at least for the MAJOR.MINOR.0 releases we want to use URLs like above rather than the trunk ones and we can use the same process of updating *.opt.urls as well for that. For the snapshots from release branches, we don't have such docs. One option (implemented in the patch below for the URL printing side) is point to the MAJOR.MINOR.0 docs even for MAJOR.MINOR.1 snapshots. Most of the links will work fine, for options newly added on the release branches (rare thing but still happens) can have until the next release no URLs for them and get them with the next point release. The question is what to do about make regenerate-opt-urls for the release branch snapshots. Either just document that users shouldn't make regenerate-opt-urls on release branches (and filter out *.opt.urls changes from their commits), add make regenerate-opt-urls task be RM responsibility before making first release candidate from a branch and adjust the autoregen CI to know about that. Or add a separate goal which instead of relying on make html created files would download copy of the html files from the last release from web (kind of web mirroring the https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.1.0/ subtree locally) and doing regenerate-opt-urls on top of that? But how to catch the point when first release candidate is made and we want to update to what will be the URLs once the release is made (but will be stale URLs for a week or so)? Another option would be to add to cron daily regeneration of the online docs for the release branches. I don't think that is a good idea though, because as I wrote earlier, not all users update to the latest snapshot frequently, so there can be users that use gcc 13.1.1 20230525 for months or years, and other users which use gcc 13.1.1 20230615 for years etc. Another question is what is most sensible for users who want to override the default root and use the --with-documentation-root-url= configure option. Do we expect them to grab the whole onlinedocs tree or for release branches at least include gcc-14.1.0/ subdirectory under the root? If so, the patch below deals with that. Or should we just change the default documentation root url, so if user doesn't specify --with-documentation-root-url= and we are on a release branch, default that to https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.1.0/ or https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.2.0/ etc. and don't add any infix in get_option_url/make_doc_url, but when people supply their own, let them point to the root of the tree which contains the right docs? Then such changes would go into gcc/configure.ac, some case based on "$gcc_version", from that decide if it is a release branch or trunk. 2024-04-17 Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> PR other/114738 * opts.cc (get_option_url): On release branches append gcc-MAJOR.MINOR.0/ after DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL. * gcc-urlifier.cc (gcc_urlifier::make_doc_url): Likewise.
Keeping open for discussions on what to do on the release branches after the release, the release itself should be fine with the committed patch.
The master branch has been updated by Jakub Jelinek <jakub@gcc.gnu.org>: https://gcc.gnu.org/g:97a54c05b8e338e673e1f7fb72c0e23abb571c60 commit r14-10109-g97a54c05b8e338e673e1f7fb72c0e23abb571c60 Author: Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> Date: Wed Apr 24 18:29:12 2024 +0200 v2: DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL vs. release branches [PR114738] This patch moves the documentation root URL infix for release branches from get_option_url/make_doc_url to configure, such that only the default changes and when users specify a custom documentation root URL, they don't have to add gcc-MAJOR.MINOR.0 subdirectories for release branches. Tested by checking ../configure --disable-bootstrap --enable-languages=c --disable-multilib built trunk on void foo (int x) { __builtin_printf ("%ld\n", x); } testcase and looking for the URL in there, then repeating that after changing gcc/BASE-VER to 14.1.0 and again after changing it to 14.1.1, plus normal bootstrap/regtest. 2024-04-24 Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> PR other/114738 * opts.cc (get_option_url): Revert 2024-04-17 changes. * gcc-urlifier.cc: Don't include diagnostic-core.h. (gcc_urlifier::make_doc_url): Revert 2024-04-17 changes. * configure.ac (documentation-root-url): On release branches append gcc-MAJOR.MINOR.0/ to the default DOCUMENTATION_ROOT_URL. * doc/install.texi (--with-documentation-root-url=): Document the change of the default. * configure: Regenerate.
Fixed.