docs/qapi-domain: add warnings for malformed field lists

Normally, Sphinx will silently fall back to its standard field list
processing if it doesn't match one of your defined fields. A lot of the
time, that's not what we want - we want to be warned if we goof
something up.

For instance, the canonical argument field list form is:

:arg type name: descr

This form is captured by Sphinx and transformed so that the field label
will become "Arguments:". It's possible to omit the type name and descr
and still have it be processed correctly. However, if you omit the type
name, Sphinx no longer recognizes it:

:arg: this is not recognized.

This will turn into an arbitrary field list entry whose label is "Arg:",
and it otherwise silently fails. You may also see failures for doing
things like using :values: instead of :value:, or :errors: instead of
:error:, and so on. It's also case sensitive, and easy to trip up.

Add a validator that guarantees all field list entries that are the
direct child of an ObjectDescription use only recognized forms of field
lists, and emit a warning (treated as error by default in most build
configurations) whenever we detect one that is goofed up.

However, there's still benefit to allowing arbitrary fields -- they are
after all not a Sphinx invention, but perfectly normal docutils
syntax. Create an allow list for known spellings we don't mind letting
through, but warn against anything else.

Signed-off-by: John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>
Message-ID: <20250311034303.75779-27-jsnow@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/docs/conf.py b/docs/conf.py
index 49d9de894c..a3f9fa63d9 100644
--- a/docs/conf.py
+++ b/docs/conf.py
@@ -153,6 +153,15 @@ rst_epilog = ".. |CONFDIR| replace:: ``" + confdir + "``\n"
 with open(os.path.join(qemu_docdir, 'defs.rst.inc')) as f:
     rst_epilog += f.read()
 
+
+# Normally, the QAPI domain is picky about what field lists you use to
+# describe a QAPI entity. If you'd like to use arbitrary additional
+# fields in source documentation, add them here.
+qapi_allowed_fields = {
+    "see also",
+}
+
+
 # -- Options for HTML output ----------------------------------------------
 
 # The theme to use for HTML and HTML Help pages.  See the documentation for