Start9 Documentation

At Start9, we see great value in maintaining clear and accurate documentation for our already simple and friendly products. These docs are a continuous work-in-progress, and we welcome contributions from our partners and customers.

Toolkit

These are the basic tools this project uses:

Markup language

Docs are written in RestructuredText. RestructuredText is a file format for textual data used primarily for technical documentation.

Sphinx

The tool we used to converts restructuredText and Markdown to HTML. Sphinx also has directives and extensions to add additional options for formatting the text.

Scylla Sphinx Theme

A forked version of the theme used by Scylla documentation projects. It also adds a set of custom functionalities and styles.

Multiversion extension

The extension used to build docs for different versions.

Typesense

The open source, integrated search engine tool.

Dependencies

Install python3 Install poetry

For installations with macOS:

brew install python3
brew install poetry

Project Setup

1. Clone this repository and enter the project folder:

   git clone https://github.com/Start9Labs/documentation.git && cd documentation
   

2. Install theme submodule:

   git submodule update --init
   

3. Ensure poetry is updated

   poetry install --no-root
   

4. Navigate to the site folder and start the project:

   cd site
   make preview
   

Development

The editable files live under ./site/source. Changes to these files will be picked up by the livereload environment.

When table of contents organization changes, the livereload environment needs to be restarted with the following commands:

make clean
make preview

Theme development

If you need to make layout or style changes to the theme, you will need to follow a different workflow.

1. Navigate to the theme submodule and install dependencies:

   cd sphinx-scylladb-theme
   npm ci
   

2. Make code changes

3. Build the theme:

   npm run build
   

4. Test code changes by restarting the project via make preview from the ./site directory.

5. Commit changes to the theme repo. In the sphinx-scylladb-theme directory, run:

   git checkout master
   git add .
   git commit -m"<COMMIT_MESSAGE>"
   git push
   cd ..
   # commit the new hash for the theme submodule to the main project
   git add .
   git commit -m"update theme"
   git push
   

Please reach out to @elvece with any questions.

Versioning

• Build for versioning (must be on master) branch: make multiversion
• To view version metadata: make multiversionpreview

Contributing to the docs

If you notice a mistake in the docs, or you have an idea for improving them, we would like to know about it. You can either fix the mistake yourself and submit a pull request, or you can report the mistake by submitting an issue.

Submitting an issue

Click on the "Issues" tab in the top navbar. Provide a good title and describe clearly the mistake or improvement.

Submitting a pull request

Click on the "Pull requests" tab in the top navbar. Select the green "New pull request button" in the top right section. Select your branch for the compare dropdown, and master as the base. Provide an appropriate title and summary of the changes in the pull request description. Changes will be reviewed and merged when satisfactory.

Helpful Resources

Sphinx and RST syntax guides:

http://sphinx-doc.org/rest.html http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html http://www.siafoo.net/help/reST http://thomas-cokelaer.info/tutorials/sphinx/rest_syntax.html https://sublime-and-sphinx-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/lists.html