Launchpad Manual

Welcome to the official Launchpad Manual. This manual is designed to help users, developers, and contributors understand and utilize the extensive features of Launchpad more effectively. It covers a wide range of topics, from basic navigation within Launchpad to advanced features such as code hosting, bug tracking, and translations. The documentation is structured to provide guidance for all levels of users, whether you are new to Launchpad or an experienced user looking to deepen your knowledge.

For more specialized needs, including non-public information relevant to the Launchpad team and other internal developers, a separate documentation resource is available. This ensures that all participants, from public users to internal developers, have access to tailored information that meets their specific requirements.

This manual is continuously updated to reflect the latest features and improvements. You can access the latest version of the documentation here.

Documentation starter pack

See the Sphinx and Read the Docs guide for instructions on how to get started with Sphinx documentation.

Then go through the following sections to use this starter pack to set up your docs repository.

Set up your documentation repository

You can either create a standalone documentation project based on this repository or include the files from this repository in a dedicated documentation folder in an existing code repository.

Note: We're planning to provide the contents of this repository as an installable package in the future, but currently, you need to copy and update the required files manually.

Standalone documentation repository

To create a standalone documentation repository, clone this starter pack repository, update the configuration, and then commit all files to the documentation repository.

You don't need to move any files, and you don't need to do any special configuration on Read the Docs.

Here is one way to do this for newly-created fictional docs repository canonical/alpha-docs:

git clone git@github.com:canonical/sphinx-docs-starter-pack alpha-docs
cd alpha-docs
rm -rf .git
git init
git branch -m main
UPDATE THE CONFIGURATION AND BUILD THE DOCS
git add -A
git commit -m "Import sphinx-docs-starter-pack"
git remote add upstream git@github.com:canonical/alpha-docs
git push -f upstream main

Documentation in a code repository

To add documentation to an existing code repository:

create a directory called docs at the root of the code repository
populate the above directory with the contents of the starter pack repository (with the exception of the .git directory)
copy the file(s) located in the docs/.github/workflows directory into the code repository's .github/workflows directory
in the above workflow file(s), change the value of the working-directory field from . to docs
in file docs/.readthedocs.yaml set the following:
- configuration: docs/conf.py
- requirements: docs/.sphinx/requirements.txt

Note: When configuring RTD itself for your project, the setting "Path for .readthedocs.yaml" (under Advanced Settings) will need to be given the value of docs/.readthedocs.yaml.

Getting started

There are make targets defined in the Makefile that do various things. To get started, we will:

install prerequisite software
view the documentation

Install prerequisite software

To install the prerequisites:

make install

This will create a virtual environment (.sphinx/venv) and install dependency software (.sphinx/requirements.txt) within it.

A complete set of pinned, known-working dependencies is included in .sphinx/pinned-requirements.txt.

View the documentation

To view the documentation:

make run

This will do several things:

activate the virtual environment
build the documentation
serve the documentation on 127.0.0.1:8000
rebuild the documentation each time a file is saved
send a reload page signal to the browser when the documentation is rebuilt

The run target is therefore very convenient when preparing to submit a change to the documentation.

Local checks

Before committing and pushing changes, it's a good practice to run various checks locally to catch issues early in the development process.

Local build

Run a clean build of the docs to surface any build errors that would occur in RTD:

make clean-doc make html

Spelling check

Ensure there are no spelling errors in the documentation:

make spelling

Inclusive language check

Ensure the documentation uses inclusive language:

make woke

Link check

Validate links within the documentation:

make linkcheck

Configure the documentation

You must modify some of the default configuration to suit your project. To simplify keeping your documentation in sync with the starter pack, all custom configuration is located in the custom_conf.py file. You should never modify the common conf.py file.

Go through all settings in the Project information section of the custom_conf.py file and update them for your project.

See the following sections for further customisation.

Configure the header

By default, the header contains your product tag, product name (taken from the project setting in the custom_conf.py file), a link to your product page, and a drop-down menu for "More resources" that contains links to Discourse and GitHub.

You can change any of those links or add further links to the "More resources" drop-down by editing the .sphinx/_templates/header.html file. For example, you might want to add links to announcements, tutorials, getting started guides, or videos that are not part of the documentation.

Configure the spelling check

If your documentation uses US English instead of UK English, change this in the .sphinx/spellingcheck.yaml file.

To add exceptions for words the spelling check marks as wrong even though they are correct, edit the .custom_wordlist.txt file. You shouldn't edit .wordlist.txt, because this file is maintained and updated centrally and contains words that apply across all projects.

Configure the inclusive-language check

If you can't avoid non-inclusive language in some cases, you'll need to configure exemptions for them.

In-file exemptions

Suppose a reST file has a link to some site you don't control, and the address contains "master" — a non-inclusive word. You can't change the link, but the remainder of the file must be checked for inclusive language. Here the woke tool's next-line ignore feature is useful, as follows.

If the link is in-line, move the definition to a line of its own (e.g. among .. LINKS at the bottom of the file). Above the definition, invoke the wokeignore rule for the offending word:

.. LINKS
.. wokeignore:rule=master
.. _link anchor: https://some-external-site.io/master/some-page.html

Exempt an entire file

If it's necessary and safe, you can exempt a whole file from inclusive-language checks. To exempt docs/foo/bar.rst for example, add the following line to .wokeignore:

foo/bar.rst

Note

For .wokeignore to take effect, you must also move it into your project's root directory. If you leave it in docs/, the woke tool won't find it and no files will be exempt.

Change checked file-types and locations

By default, only reST files are checked for inclusive language — and only those in the documentation folder (usually docs/) and its subfolders. To check Markdown files for example, or files outside the docs/ subtree, you must change how the woke tool is invoked.

The woke command is issued from docs/Makefile. The command's syntax is out of scope here — consult the woke User Guide.

Configure the link check

If you have links in the documentation that you don't want to be checked (for example, because they are local links or give random errors even though they work), you can add them to the linkcheck_ignore variable in the custom_conf.py file.

Activate/deactivate feedback button

A feedback button is included by default, which appears at the top of each page in the documentation. It redirects users to your GitHub issues page, and populates an issue for them with details of the page they were on when they clicked the button.

If your project does not use GitHub issues, set the github_issues variable in the custom_conf.py file to an empty value to disable both the feedback button and the issue link in the footer. If you want to deactivate only the feedback button, but keep the link in the footer, set disable_feedback_button in the custom_conf.py file to True.

Add redirects

You can add redirects to make sure existing links and bookmarks continue working when you move files around. To do so, specify the old and new paths in the redirects setting of the custom_conf.py file.

Add custom configuration

To add custom configurations for your project, see the Additions to default configuration and Additional configuration sections in the custom_conf.py file. These can be used to extend or override the common configuration, or to define additional configuration that is not covered by the common conf.py file.

(Optional) Synchronise GitHub issues to Jira

If you wish to sync issues from your documentation repository on GitHub to your Jira board, configure the GitHub/Jira sync bot by editing the .github/workflows/.jira_sync_config.yaml file appropriately. In addition to updating this file, you must also apply server configuration for this feature to work. For more information, see server configuration details for the GitHub/Jira sync bot.

The .jira_sync_config.yaml file that is included in the starter pack contains configuration for syncing issues from the starter pack repository to its documentation Jira board. Therefore, it does not work out of the box for other repositories in GitHub, and you must update it if you want to use the synchronisation feature.

Change log

See the change log for a list of relevant changes to the starter pack.

simonepelosi / launchpad-manual