Docker Documentation

Overview

The source for Docker documentation is here under sources/ and uses extended Markdown, as implemented by mkdocs.

The HTML files are built and hosted on https://docs.docker.io, and update automatically after each change to the master or release branch of the docker files on GitHub thanks to post-commit hooks. The "release" branch maps to the "latest" documentation and the "master" (unreleased development) branch maps to the "master" documentation.

Branches

There are two branches related to editing docs: master and a docs branch. You should always edit docs on a local branch of the master branch, and send a PR against master. That way your fixes will automatically get included in later releases, and docs maintainers can easily cherry-pick your changes into the docs release branch. In the rare case where your change is not forward-compatible, you may need to base your changes on the docs branch.

Now that we have a docs branch, we can keep the http://docs.docker.io docs up to date with any bugs found between docker code releases.

Warning: When reading the docs, the http://beta-docs.docker.io documentation may include features not yet part of any official docker release. The beta-docs site should be used only for understanding bleeding-edge development and docs.docker.io (which points to the docs branch``) should be used for the latest official release.

Getting Started

Docker documentation builds are done in a docker container, which installs all the required tools, adds the local docs/ directory and builds the HTML docs. It then starts a HTTP server on port 8000 so that you can connect and see your changes.

In the docker source directory, run: make docs

If you have any issues you need to debug, you can use make docs-shell and then run mkdocs serve

Contributing

Normal Case:

• Follow the contribution guidelines (see ../CONTRIBUTING.md).
• Remember to sign your work!
• Work in your own fork of the code, we accept pull requests.
• Change the .md files with your favorite editor -- try to keep the lines short (80 chars) and respect Markdown conventions.
• Run make clean docs to clean up old files and generate new ones, or just make docs to update after small changes.
• Your static website can now be found in the _build directory.
• To preview what you have generated run make server and open http://localhost:8000/ in your favorite browser.

make clean docs must complete without any warnings or errors.

Working using GitHub's file editor

Alternatively, for small changes and typos you might want to use GitHub's built in file editor. It allows you to preview your changes right online (though there can be some differences between GitHub Markdown and mkdocs Markdown). Just be careful not to create many commits. And you must still sign your work!

Images

When you need to add images, try to make them as small as possible (e.g. as gif). Usually images should go in the same directory as the .md file which references them, or in a subdirectory if one already exists.

Publishing Documentation

To publish a copy of the documentation you need a docs/awsconfig file containing AWS settings to deploy to. The release script will create an s3 if needed, and will then push the files to it.

[profile dowideit-docs]
aws_access_key_id = IHOIUAHSIDH234rwf....
aws_secret_access_key = OIUYSADJHLKUHQWIUHE......
region = ap-southeast-2

The profile name must be the same as the name of the bucket you are deploying to - which you call from the docker directory:

make AWS_S3_BUCKET=dowideit-docs docs-release