The FSF has approved the inclusion of automatically generated cross-reference information (such as that generated by Doxygen, Synopsis, or JavaDoc) in GCC, using GPLv3 for that documentation, rather than the GFDL. There was no license issue in this regard; the question was a policy question. In particular: is it OK to have "documentation" that is not under the GFDL in GCC?
Of course, this cross-reference documentation cannot be combined with GFDL documentation to form a single manual. But, if we want to generate/ship internal API documentation, or plugin API documentation, in this form, we can do so. (I understand, of course, that the libstdc++ team has been doing this for some time.) This explicit permission re. cross-references does not resolve the question of auto-generating parts of GFDL manuals, such as those containing documentation about target hooks or about command-line options. (For target hooks, we might wish to consider using the permission given above to generate a separate document, though.) I will continue to work on the GPL->GFDL issue as best I can, but my expectation is that getting general permission regarding use of GPL'd code to generate GFDL'd documentation, including the right for downstream recipients to regenerate the documentation, will take a long time. I'm disappointed to see these "islands" (GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 vs. GFDL) of code and documentation that cannot be combined, but that seems to be the state of the world. -- Mark Mitchell CodeSourcery m...@codesourcery.com (650) 331-3385 x713
