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Documentation

Getting started

This documentation is done using MkDocs with multiple plugins enabled. It's based on the Markdown, you can find basic syntax overview here.

In order to contribute to the documentation, you'll need to have Git and Docker installed on your machine as well as any editor of your choice, preferably supporting Markdown preview. You can run the preview server using following command:

make serve

Now you can open continuously updated preview of your edits in browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000. Pages will be automatically updated while you're editing.

Additionally you can run

make build

to make sure that your changes will be built correctly and doesn't break documentation.

Workflow

If you want to quick edit any page in the documentation, you can press the Edit this page icon at the top right of the page. It'll open the page in the GitHub editor. You can edit it and create a pull request with your changes.

Please, never push to the master or release/* branches directly. Always create a pull request and wait for the review.

Each pull request will be automatically built and preview will be deployed. You can find the link to the preview in the comments in pull request.

Repository

Documentation is organized in per-release branches:

  • master - ongoing development, not released yet, referenced as dev version in the documentation
  • release/alpha-1/release/alpha-2 - alpha releases, referenced as alpha-1/alpha-2 versions in the documentation, if patches released for alpha-1, they'll be merged into release/alpha-1 branch
  • release/v1.0 - first stable release, referenced as v1.0 version in the documentation, if patches (e.g. v1.0.1) released for v1.0, they'll be merged into release/v1.0 branch

Latest release branch is referenced as latest version in the documentation and will be used by default when you open the documentation.

File layout

All documentation files are located in docs directory. Each file is a Markdown file with .md extension. You can create subdirectories to organize your files. Each directory can have a .pages file that overrides the default navigation order and titles.

For example, top-level .pages in this repository looks like this:

nav:
  - index.md
  - getting-started
  - concepts
  - Wiring Diagram: wiring
  - Install & Upgrade: install-upgrade
  - User Guide: user-guide
  - Reference: reference
  - Troubleshooting: troubleshooting
  - ...
  - release-notes
  - contribute

Where you can add pages by file name like index.md and page title will be taked from the file (first line with #). Additionally, you can reference the whole directory to created nested section in navigation. You can also add custom titles by using : separator like Wiring Diagram: wiring where Wiring Diagram is a title and wiring is a file/directory name.

More details in the MkDocs Pages plugin.

Abbreviations

You can find abbreviations in includes/abbreviations.md file. You can add various abbreviations there and all usages of the defined words in the documentation will get a highlight.

For example, we have following in includes/abbreviations.md:

*[HHFab]: Hedgehog Fabricator - a tool for building Hedgehog Fabric

It'll highlight all usages of HHFab in the documentation and show a tooltip with the definition like this: HHFab.

Markdown extensions

We're using MkDocs Material theme with multiple extensions enabled. You can find detailed reference here, but here you can find some of the most useful ones.

To view code for examples, please, check the source code of this page.

Text formatting

Text can be deleted and replacement text added. This can also be combined into onea single operation. Highlighting is also possible and comments can be added inline.

Formatting can also be applied to blocks by putting the opening and closing tags on separate lines and adding new lines between the tags and the content.

Keyboard keys can be written like so:

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Amd inline icons/emojis can be added like this:

:fontawesome-regular-face-laugh-wink:
:fontawesome-brands-twitter:{ .twitter }

Admonitions

Admonitions, also known as call-outs, are an excellent choice for including side content without significantly interrupting the document flow. Different types of admonitions are available, each with a unique icon and color. Details can be found here.

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla et euismod nulla. Curabitur feugiat, tortor non consequat finibus, justo purus auctor massa, nec semper lorem quam in massa.

Code blocks

Details can be found here.

Simple code block with line nums and highlighted lines:

bubble_sort.py
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3
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def bubble_sort(items):
    for i in range(len(items)):
        for j in range(len(items) - 1 - i):
            if items[j] > items[j + 1]:
                items[j], items[j + 1] = items[j + 1], items[j]

Code annotations:

theme:
  features:
    - content.code.annotate # (1)
  1. 🙋‍♂️ I'm a code annotation! I can contain code, formatted text, images, ... basically anything that can be written in Markdown.

Tabs

You can use Tabs to better organize content.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
  printf("Hello world!\n");
  return 0;
}

#include <iostream>

int main(void) {
  std::cout << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

Tables

Method Description
GET Fetch resource
PUT Update resource
DELETE Delete resource

Diagrams

You can directly include Mermaid diagrams in your Markdown files. Details can be found here.

graph LR
  A[Start] --> B{Error?};
  B -->|Yes| C[Hmm...];
  C --> D[Debug];
  D --> B;
  B ---->|No| E[Yay!];
sequenceDiagram
  autonumber
  Alice->>John: Hello John, how are you?
  loop Healthcheck
      John->>John: Fight against hypochondria
  end
  Note right of John: Rational thoughts!
  John-->>Alice: Great!
  John->>Bob: How about you?
  Bob-->>John: Jolly good!
Last update: September 30, 2024
Created: October 26, 2023