Writing the Docs

Build and Run the Docs.

The docs are build with Sphinx. It's integrated with the main project Makefile. make livedocs builds the docs and runs the doc site live at http://localhost:8000

Sphinx Tricks

• If the whole section belongs Enterprise Edition, put the following note:

  .. note::
  
     Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is only available in StackStorm Enterprise Edition. For
     information about enterprise edition and differences between community and enterprise edition,
     please see `stackstorm.com/product <https://stackstorm.com/product/#enterprise>`_.
  

  Refer to Enterprise edition in passing with

    `see Enterprise Edition <https://stackstorm.com/product/#enterprise>`_
  

• TODO (Use http://localhost:8000/todo.html for full TODO list (must be empty when we ship) :

  .. todo:: Here is a TODO

• Code fragment:

  .. code-block: bash

  # List all available triggers
    st2 trigger list
  

• Reference the document

  :doc:/start :doc:in the Rules doc </rules>

• Referencing an arbitrary section: for instance, there's examples section in sensors.rst. Define a reference on examples section in sensors.rst:

     .. _sensors-examples:
  

  and point to it as from this, or from other documensts as:

       :ref:`sensors-examples`
       :ref:`My examples <sensors-examples>`
  

  Note that the leading _ underscore is gone, and the reference is quoted.

  Name convention for references is _filename-refname (because they are unique across the docs). Note that there is no way to reference just a point in the docs. See http://sphinx-doc.org/markup/inline.html#cross-referencing-syntax

• External links:

  External link <http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=stackstorm>_

• Inlcude a document, full body:

  .. include:: /engage.rst

• Link to GitHub st2 repo

  :github_st2:st2/st2common/st2common/operators.py </st2common/st2common/operators.py>

• Link to Github st2contrib repo:

  :github_contrib:Link to docker README on st2contrib<packs/docker/README.md>

• Link to st2contrib and st2incubator repos on Github (using a global we set up in source/conf.py)

  st2contrib_ st2incubator_

• The pattern to include an example from /contrib/examples: make example file name a reference on github. may say that it is deployed to /usr/share/doc/st2/examples/, and auto-include the file:

  Sample rule: :github_st2:sample-rule-with-webhook.yaml </contrib/examples/rules/sample-rule-with-webhook.yaml> :

  .. literalinclude:: /../../contrib/examples/rules/sample_rule_with_webhook.yaml :language: json

Pandoc - convert md <-> rst and more

pandoc - a super-tool to convert between formats. Sample for markdown conversion:

sudo apt-get install pandoc pandoc --from=markdown --to=rst --output=README.rst README.md

Running docs only

To make docs changes, without installing full development environment (e.g., on Mac or Windows:

git clone [email protected]:StackStorm/st2.git
cd st2/docs
virtualenv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install sphinx sphinx-autobuild
sphinx-autobuild -H 0.0.0.0 -b html ./source/ ./build/html

Edit, enjoy live updates.

Misc

It's ironic that I use Markdown to write about rST tricks.