See the Sphinx and Read the Docs guide for instructions on how to get started with Sphinx documentation.
Then go through the following sections to use this starter pack to set up your docs repository.
You can either create a standalone documentation project based on this repository or include the files from this repository in a dedicated documentation folder in an existing code repository.
Note: We're planning to provide the contents of this repository as an installable package in the future, but currently, you need to copy and update the required files manually.
To create a standalone documentation repository, clone this starter pack repository, update the configuration, and then commit all files to the documentation repository.
You don't need to move any files, and you don't need to do any special configuration on Read the Docs.
Here is one way to do this for newly-created fictional docs repository
canonical/alpha-docs:
git clone [email protected]:canonical/sphinx-docs-starter-pack alpha-docs
cd alpha-docs
rm -rf .git
git init
git branch -m main
UPDATE THE CONFIGURATION AND BUILD THE DOCS
git add -A
git commit -m "Import sphinx-docs-starter-pack"
git remote add upstream [email protected]:canonical/alpha-docs
git push -f upstream main
To add documentation to an existing code repository:
- create a directory called
docsat the root of the code repository - populate the above directory with the contents of the starter pack
repository (with the exception of the
.gitdirectory) - copy the file(s) located in the
docs/.github/workflowsdirectory into the code repository's.github/workflowsdirectory - in the above workflow file(s), change the value of the
working-directoryfield from.todocs - in file
docs/.readthedocs.yamlset the following:configuration: docs/conf.pyrequirements: docs/.sphinx/requirements.txt
Note: When configuring RTD itself for your project, the setting "Path for
.readthedocs.yaml" (under Advanced Settings) will need to be given the
value of docs/.readthedocs.yaml.
There are make targets defined in the Makefile that do various things. To
get started, we will:
- install prerequisite software
- view the documentation
To install the prerequisites:
make install
This will create a virtual environment (.sphinx/venv) and install
dependency software (.sphinx/requirements.txt) within it.
A complete set of pinned, known-working dependencies is included in
.sphinx/pinned-requirements.txt.
To view the documentation:
make run
This will do several things:
- activate the virtual environment
- build the documentation
- serve the documentation on 127.0.0.1:8000
- rebuild the documentation each time a file is saved
- send a reload page signal to the browser when the documentation is rebuilt
The run target is therefore very convenient when preparing to submit a
change to the documentation.
Before committing and pushing changes, it's a good practice to run various checks locally to catch issues early in the development process.
Run a clean build of the docs to surface any build errors that would occur in RTD:
make clean-doc
make html
Ensure there are no spelling errors in the documentation:
make spellingEnsure the documentation uses inclusive language:
make wokeValidate links within the documentation:
make linkcheckYou must modify some of the default configuration to suit your project.
To simplify keeping your documentation in sync with the starter pack, all custom configuration is located in the custom_conf.py file.
You should never modify the common conf.py file.
Go through all settings in the Project information section of the custom_conf.py file and update them for your project.
See the following sections for further customisation.
By default, the header contains your product tag, product name (taken from the project setting in the custom_conf.py file), a link to your product page, and a drop-down menu for "More resources" that contains links to Discourse and GitHub.
You can change any of those links or add further links to the "More resources" drop-down by editing the .sphinx/_templates/header.html file.
For example, you might want to add links to announcements, tutorials, getting started guides, or videos that are not part of the documentation.
If your documentation uses US English instead of UK English, change this in the
.sphinx/spellingcheck.yaml file.
To add exceptions for words the spelling check marks as wrong even though they are correct, edit the .wordlist.txt file.
If you can't avoid non-inclusive language in some cases, you'll need to configure exemptions for them.
Suppose a reST file has a link to some site you don't control, and the address
contains "master" — a non-inclusive word. You can't change the link,
but the remainder of the file must be checked for inclusive language. Here the
woke tool's next-line ignore feature is
useful, as follows.
If the link is in-line, move the definition to a line of its own (e.g. among
.. LINKS at the bottom of the file). Above the definition, invoke the
wokeignore rule for the offending word:
.. LINKS
.. wokeignore:rule=master
.. _link anchor: https://some-external-site.io/master/some-page.htmlIf it's necessary and safe, you can exempt a whole file from
inclusive-language checks. To exempt docs/foo/bar.rst for example, add the
following line to .wokeignore:
foo/bar.rst
Note
For .wokeignore to take effect, you must also move it into your
project's root directory. If you leave it in docs/, the woke tool
won't find it and no files will be exempt.
By default, only reST files are checked for inclusive language — and only those
in the documentation folder (usually docs/) and its subfolders. To check
Markdown files for example, or files outside the docs/ subtree, you must
change how the woke tool is invoked.
The woke command is issued from docs/Makefile. The command's syntax
is out of scope here — consult the woke User Guide.
If you have links in the documentation that you don't want to be checked (for
example, because they are local links or give random errors even though they
work), you can add them to the linkcheck_ignore variable in the custom_conf.py file.
A feedback button is included by default, which appears at the top of each page in the documentation. It redirects users to your GitHub issues page, and populates an issue for them with details of the page they were on when they clicked the button.
If your project does not use GitHub issues, set the github_issues variable
in the custom_conf.py file to an empty value to disable both the feedback button
and the issue link in the footer.
If you want to deactivate only the feedback button, but keep the link in the
footer, set disable_feedback_button in the custom_conf.py file to True.
You can add redirects to make sure existing links and bookmarks continue working when you move files around.
To do so, specify the old and new paths in the redirects setting of the custom_conf.py file.
To add custom configurations for your project, see the Additions to default configuration and Additional configuration sections in the custom_conf.py file.
These can be used to extend or override the common configuration, or to define additional configuration that is not covered by the common conf.py file.
If you wish to sync issues from your documentation repository on GitHub to your
Jira board, configure the GitHub/Jira sync bot
by editing the .github/workflows/.jira_sync_config.yaml file appropriately.
In addition to updating this file, you must also apply server configuration
for this feature to work. For more information, see server configuration details
for the GitHub/Jira sync bot.
The .jira_sync_config.yaml file that is included in the starter pack
contains configuration for syncing issues from the starter pack repository to
its documentation Jira board.
Therefore, it does not work out of the box for other repositories in GitHub,
and you must update it if you want to use the synchronisation feature.
See the change log for a list of relevant changes to the starter pack.