Local preview

The easiest way to preview and test your changes to Spinnaker.io is to run your branch locally with Docker, via the dockerfile included in the root directory.

In the root directory of your fork, run:

docker build --tag spinnaker/spinnaker.github.io-test .
docker run -it --rm --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd),target=/code" \
    -p 4000:4000 spinnaker/spinnaker.github.io-test --incremental

Navigate to http://localhost:4000 to see your locally generated page.

Jekyll method

Alternatively, set up Jekyll and use it to run the site locally. It runs on Ruby, and running multiple versions of Ruby on a single system can create challenges. These instructions install rbenv, which makes it easy to install and switch to a specific Ruby version.

Installation

1. (Optional) Create and run from a fresh VM instance, and forward the Jekyll default port (4000):
   1. gcloud compute instances create jekyll --image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud --image-family=ubuntu-1804-lts --machine-type=n1-standard-1
   2. gcloud compute ssh jekyll --ssh-flag="-L 4000:localhost:4000"
2. Install rbenv and ruby-build. Add these to $PATH:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt-get install -y git bzip2 build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev
   git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
   git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
   echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
   echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc
   

3. Install and use ruby 2.4.1

   rbenv install 2.4.1
   rbenv global 2.4.1
   

4. Fork and clone your forked repo:

   GITHUB_USER=$USER # or something else here
   git clone https://github.com/$GITHUB_USER/spinnaker.github.io.git
   

5. Install bundle gem

   cd spinnaker.github.io
   gem install bundler
   bundle install
   

Your system is now ready for local preview of the documentation site.

Local preview

1. Start Jekyll server
   1. bundle exec jekyll serve --watch
2. (Optional): Add --incremental to speed up page generation when working on one page
   1. bundle exec jekyll serve --watch --incremental
3. Navigate to http://localhost:4000 to see your locally generated page.

(Optional) Host the website on Amazon S3

Hosting the documentation website on Amazon S3 allows review from look/feel perspective before a pull request is submitted. This allows peer reviews of a breaking change without needing any technical setup by the reviewer.

1. Enable static website hosting on a S3 Bucket
2. gem install s3_website
3. s3_website cfg create
4. Delete s3_id and s3_secret so that your AWS credentials can be read from ~/.aws/credentials
5. Modify url property at _config.yml to use the CNAME that you want to use
6. jekyll build
7. s3_website push

Page Generation

A page named foo.md will be transformed to foo/index.html and links to foo will result in an HTTP 301 to foo/. This has two implications:

1. It is more efficient to include the trailing / in links.
2. If you anticipate including resources like images or subpages, create foo/index.md instead of foo.md.

During local development, see what's actually generated by browsing the _site directory.

Mermaid

Sequence diagrams can be generated with the mermaid.js library by adding {% include mermaid %} near the bottom of the page. See some of the security docs for an example.

Breadcrumbs

Each page has a breadcrumb trail at the top that is based on the URL structure. You should ensure that there is at least an index.md file within each URL directory, otherwise the links will break.

Link Checker

Keep the "broken window theory" at bay by ensuring all links work with HTML Proofer

Run link checker before committing: rake test