Julia 0.4.6 backport of #15334

[omus]

The original PR didn't backport cleanly as base/docs/helpdb/Dates.jl didn't exist on 0.4 and Markdown tables were not supported.

[tkelman]

can you add the cross-reference to the original commit sha and PR # in the commit message? thanks

[tkelman]

is this supposed to be data?

[omus]

The original PR did switch it from function to data. Worth noting that all those functions do have docstrings attached.

[tkelman]

and Markdown tables were not supported.

I think I backported that in my branch?

[omus]

I'm working off of your branch (currently 7d54836). When running make julia-genstdlib I'm getting:

ERROR: LoadError: MethodError: `writemime` has no method matching writemime(::Base.AbstractIOBuffer{Array{UInt8,1}}, ::MIME{symbol("text/rst")}, ::Base.Markdown.Table)
Closest candidates are:
  writemime(::IO, !Matched::AbstractString, ::Any)
  writemime(::IO, !Matched::MIME{symbol("text/plain")}, ::Any)
  writemime(::IO, ::MIME{symbol("text/rst")}, !Matched::Base.Markdown.MD)
  ...
 in rst at markdown/render/rst.jl:66
 in rst at markdown/render/rst.jl:8
 in rst at markdown/render/rst.jl:14
 in sprint at ./iostream.jl:206
 in split_decl_rst at /Users/omus/Development/Julia/0.4/doc/genstdlib.jl:166
 in anonymous at /Users/omus/Development/Julia/0.4/doc/genstdlib.jl:248
 in open at iostream.jl:114
 in translate at /Users/omus/Development/Julia/0.4/doc/genstdlib.jl:184
 [inlined code] from /Users/omus/Development/Julia/0.4/doc/genstdlib.jl:292
 in anonymous at no file:0
 in include at ./boot.jl:261
 in include_from_node1 at ./loading.jl:320
 in process_options at ./client.jl:280
 in _start at ./client.jl:378
while loading /Users/omus/Development/Julia/0.4/doc/genstdlib.jl, in expression starting on line 288
make: *** [julia-genstdlib] Error 1

If/when Markdown tables get backported I'll happily update this PR to use the Markdown tables.

[tkelman]

I was thinking of c47090d - so is genstdlib broken in some way here?

[omus]

The issue with make julia-genstdlib only occurs when trying to use Markdown tables in docstrings. In this PR I switched to using RST tables so the documentation builds just fine.

I don't think we need to fix genstdlib here. I'm fine with just using an RST table for the backport but if we decide to backport Markdown table support I can switch this documentation back to using Markdown tables.

[MichaelHatherly]

I think 1517b72 is probably what's needed here as well as c47090d. There might be some other parts of #14378 that are also needed for backporting these changes to work correctly.