Attention

(August 2021) Streetmix documentation has now moved! Please update your bookmarks to https://docs.streetmix.net/.

Documentation

You’re looking at it!

Our documentation lives in the docs folder of the Streetmix repository. It’s built and hosted by Read the Docs.

We use the reStructuredText (reST) syntax. While Markdown is a very common alternative, it’s harder to format extensive technical documentation with it.

Important

Not all technical documentation lives here! Documentation of specific functions or components should be written in the source code itself. Documentation relating to a directory of related modules should live in a dedicated Markdown README.md file coexisting with those files. This helps keep narrowly-focused documentation up-to-date and easier to find.

Technical documentation pertaining to cross-cutting concerns or high-level architecture do belong here!

For guidance on writing documentation in source code, see Code styleguide.

Local development setup

You don’t need to build documentation locally when writing code for Streetmix. However, it is a good idea to document what you’re working on, so we do recommend writing and updating documentation. Here’s how to set up a local development instance of the documentation so you can preview any changes.

1. Install dependencies

First, make sure you have a working Python development environment on your system. Installing Python is outside of the scope of this guide.

Install Sphinx, the Read the Docs Sphinx theme, and extensions.

pip install sphinx sphinx-prompt sphinx_rtd_theme

2. Build documentation

Documentation must be built from the ./docs working directory.

cd docs
make dirhtml

Note

The directory HTML renderer will create URLs that match the path structure that we use on Read the Docs.

Alternatively, we’ve provided an npm package script that can build documentation from the root directory.

npm run docs:build

In the future…

We would like to develop a watch and livereload system that automatically rebuilds documentation locally when contents change. For now, you must manually run a local build whenever you make changes.

3. Preview

Run a static file server, such as http-server, to preview the built documentation. Built files are located in ./docs/_build, and the example command below assumes you are in the ./docs working directory.

http-server _build/dirhtml

You may use any static file server solution you wish. We’ve also provided an npm package script that assumes http-server is available on the system’s global packages and will automatically serve the documentation locally at http://localhost:8080/.

npm run docs:serve

Attention

A static file server does not automatically watch and rebuild changed files. You must manually rebuild files and then reload your browser to see the changes.

4. Upload

Commit your changes and push to the upstream repository.

git add .
git commit -m 'docs: short commit message [skip ci]'
git push origin

5. Deploy

Once documentation have been committed to the Streetmix main branch, Read the Docs will automatically build and deploy the revised documentation to https://streetmix.readthedocs.io/. Read the Docs does not wait for continuous integration to pass, and a production build will be triggered on each commit.