DevNotes_DevGuide_BuildDocs

Building the Help Docs

The process for building the help docs has steadily evolved as we transitioned from SasView 3.x to SasView 4.x to SasView 5.x. This is because in SasView 4.x the help documentation for each model was no longer standalone but actually an integral part of the model file itself. This in turn meant that the model help documentation was no longer part of SasView per se, rather it became part of the sasmodels library. The streamlining of build processes throughout SasView 5.x has then added additional subtleties.

The following is believed to be current as of Oct 2022.

Remember you now need to have sasdata installed too!

Models

To build the model help docs:

Open a command window and

 cd sasmodels\doc
 make html

or (optionally)

 make clean html

This should populate the \sasmodels\doc\_build folder with a \html folder containing html doc files 'slurped' from the ReST doc strings in the actual model files.

Now

 cd ..
 python setup.py build

This is necessary to generate a \sasmodels\build folder and populate it with a \lib folder containing the model files themselves. This folder has nothing to do with the doc build except that the main doc build (ie, of sasmodels + sasview) will fail if this folder is missing!

General Documentation

To build the sasview docs

 cd..\..\sasview
 python setup.py build docs

This should populate the \sasview\docs\sphinx-docs\build folder with an html folder containing the integrated SasView and sasmodels html doc files.

To check, open the file \sasview\docs\sphinx-docs\build\html\index.html in a web browser.