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authorJakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>2025-06-14 13:42:57 -0700
committerJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>2025-06-21 14:14:33 -0600
commite5880f95a97928308845dc97fdd239605e06e501 (patch)
tree3f0f5752d4c7093ad8294b4de5f245f56275d60e
parent0242b8b0cc89599b3e4162add672179ce2dd4131 (diff)
docs: process: discourage pointless boilerplate kdoc
It appears that folks "less versed in kernel coding" think that its good style to document every function, even if they have no useful information to pass to the future readers of the code. This used to be just a waste of space, but with increased kdoc format linting it's also a burden when refactoring the code. Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Joe Damato <joe@dama.to> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250614204258.61449-1-kuba@kernel.org
-rw-r--r--Documentation/process/coding-style.rst5
1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
index 19d2ed47ff79..d1a8e5465ed9 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
@@ -614,7 +614,10 @@ it.
When commenting the kernel API functions, please use the kernel-doc format.
See the files at :ref:`Documentation/doc-guide/ <doc_guide>` and
-``scripts/kernel-doc`` for details.
+``scripts/kernel-doc`` for details. Note that the danger of over-commenting
+applies to kernel-doc comments all the same. Do not add boilerplate
+kernel-doc which simply reiterates what's obvious from the signature
+of the function.
The preferred style for long (multi-line) comments is: