Support contents in needextend

needextend currently supports add/append/removal of needs_extra_options and needs_extra_links. How about allowing to extend the contents part?

.. needextend:: SW_REQ_001
   :+derives: SYS_REQ_001

   This is extended content

needextend contents could be configured as pre, post or overwrite.

This allows to import just the meta-information as needs from external tools and then add textual content in rST.

Is this feasible?

[danwos]

Agree, a check would be good.

Currently, manipulations get also stored and needs are filterable based on them: https://sphinx-needs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/directives/needextend.html#monitoring-modifications

But this counter is not based on specific options or the content. Maybe a feature request to extend this mechanism would be helpful.

[danwos]

Maybe it is doable on doctree-level, if the needextend-content can only be used to add (pre or post) or replace need-content (as you have written). Then we could render the rst in the needextend-directive, when this directive gets read. And later we do some direct doctree-manipulations, where we add or replace the needextend-content-node to/with the need-content-node. After that, we delete the needextend-node from the doctree.

So yes, it sounds doable 😃