Documentation project¶

The documentation project is a part of the overall Arvados project. The output from this project forms the official documentation at http://doc.arvados.org. It is also included in the Arvados source tree.

Guides¶

There are six guides that are being developed to support the use of Arvados:

• Getting Started - Quickstart and overview of Arvados (what it is, who it's for, and key features).

• User Guide - Introductory and tutorial materials for building analysis or web applications using Arvados.

• SDK Reference - Details about the accessing Arvados from various programming languages.

• API Reference - REST API methods and resources, the MapReduce job execution environment, permission model, etc.

• Admin Guide - Instructions to system administrators for maintaining an Arvados installation.

• Install Guide - How to install and configure Arvados on the cloud management platform of your choice.

A web version of the documentation is available at http://doc.arvados.org.

Documentation Project¶

The Arvados documentation is written in Markdown, Textile, and HTML. The source code is in the doc directory in the Arvados source tree. We use Jekyll to render HTML pages.

Contributing¶

Bugs in the documentation can be submitted as issues.

If you'd like to fix documentation bugs yourself, or to otherwise contribute to the documentation, clone the Arvados source repository, edit, and send pull requests just as you would when contributing program source code.

We do not yet maintain a separate documentation mailing list, so we encourage documentation contributors to join the main developer mailing list.

References for contributors:

• Markdown syntax
• Textile syntax
• Zenweb
• Liquid for designers (template engine)

Contributor quick-start:

git clone git://github.com/curoverse/arvados.git
cd arvados/doc
bundle install
rake
# documentation will be generated in .site/
rake run

Note: The repository is only a few megabytes in size.
You can now preview it in your browser at http://localhost:8000 .

To generate Python SDK docs, install epydoc and arvados-python-client before running rake in arvados/doc:

sudo apt-get install python-pip python-virtualenv
virtualenv /tmp/z
PATH=/tmp/z/bin:$PATH
pip install epydoc arvados-python-client
rake

When you want to start making changes to the site, do so on a branch. If you'd like to follow our development process, create or pick an existing issue. For documentation purposes, https://arvados.org/issues/4926 is a safe bet. Note the issue number: 4926.

Then,

git checkout -b 4926-some-description
# (make your changes to the documentation)
git status # shows you what files have changed
# Next, git add [the files you want to include in the update. For example...]
git add _config.yml _includes/_navbar_top.liquid _layouts/default.html.liquid index.html.liquid
git commit -m "4926: Added foobar to barfoo" 
git remote add curoverse git@git.curoverse.com:arvados.git
git push curoverse 4926-getting-started:4926-getting-started

The last command will throw “fatal” error if you’re pushing a new branch, e.g. “remote: fatal: Invalid revision range". This can be safely ignored.

Additionally, if you get a 403 error, email support@curoverse.com to request write permissions on the Arvados repository.

Code Review¶

Next, get it reviewed! After logging in to Arvados Redmine (http://arvados.org), add it as a subtask under the appropriate issue. Story/issue 4926 is a safe bet.

https://arvados.org/issues/4926

If you don't see and "Add" link (shown below) on the subtasks on the issue

email support@curoverse.com to get permissions in the Redmine issue tracker to add tasks.

Call the task something along the lines of "Review branch: 4926-some-description".

The task / branch should get reviewed shortly. If not, email support@curoverse.com .

Merging to master branch¶

You've gotten the green light from code review to merge your branch into master. Now what?

git checkout master
git merge --no-ff 4926-some-description
git push origin master

The merge message needs to include some special syntax or else your merge commit will be rejected:

refs #4926 Merge branch '4926-some-description'

Alternatively, if your merge closes issue(s) (for instance, the "review branch" subtask you created), use something like

closes #5090 Merge branch '4926-some-description'

This will mark the issue as resolved and make a note of the commit hash in the subtask, #5090 in this case.

If no issue was created, use "no issue #" like so

Fix typo
No issue #

After that, your code changes should take effect on the next deploy.

Important files and folders¶

These are located in the arvados/doc directory.

• /css/
  By convention, we store all the CSS files here.
• /js/
  By convention, we store all the Javascript files here.
• /_includes/_navbar_top.liquid
  These describe the top navigation bar, if you are adding or renaming sections
• /_config.yml
  This file describes the order of pages in the left navigation bar.
• /_layouts/default.html.liquid
  If you wish to include new CSS or Javascript files (for instance, in /css or /js) across the whole site, do so here.