This is the new technical documentation system for GOV.UK PaaS published at docs.cloud.service.gov.uk.
Documentation for the technical documentation tool is published at https://tdt-documentation.london.cloudapps.digital [external link].
Clone this repository to a folder on your computer.
Install Ruby with Rubygems, preferably with Ruby version manager, and the Bundler gem.
In the application folder, type the following to install the required gems:
bundle install
To make changes, edit the markdown files in the source folder.
Although a single page of HTML is generated, the markdown is spread across
multiple files to make it easier to manage. They can be found in
source/documentation.
A new markdown file is not automatically included in the generated output. If you
add a new markdown file at the location source/documentation/agile/scrum.md,
the following snippet in source/index.html.md.erb will include it in the
generated output.
<%= partial 'documentation/agile/scrum' %>
Including files manually like this enables you to specify the position they appear in the page.
The sections in the documentation are controlled by the use of markdown headers, not the file structure.
Images to be included in the docs are kept in source/documentation/figures
In order to configure some aspects of layout, like the header, edit config/tech-docs.yml.
Whilst writing documentation, you can run a middleman server to preview how the published version will look in the browser.
The preview is only available on your own computer. Others will not be able to access it if they are given the link.
Type the following to start the server:
bundle exec middleman server
If all goes well something like the following output will be displayed:
== The Middleman is loading
== LiveReload accepting connections from ws://192.168.0.8:35729
== View your site at "http://Laptop.local:4567", "http://192.168.0.8:4567"
== Inspect your site configuration at "http://Laptop.local:4567/__middleman", "http://192.168.0.8:4567/__middleman"
You should now be able to view a live preview at http://localhost:4567.
Changes to the tech-docs.yml file require stopping and restarting the server to show up in the preview. (Stop it with Ctrl-C).
This repo is configured in GitHub actions to run a link-checker over the generated docs to find any broken links and so on. If you want to run this locally, do the following:
virtualenv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
make dependencies
make test
The docs are hosted on GitHub Pages which is deployed using GitHub actions. GitHub pages is configured with a custom sub-domain at docs.cloud.service.gov.uk.
The deploy process first runs bundle exec middleman build which generates a build directory consisting of static files for our site.
Next the upload-pages-artifact action takes the build directory and turns it into
a gzip archive called github-pages which the deploy-pages action uses to deploy to GitHub pages.
The master repository for the tech docs template system is at https://github.com/alphagov/tech-docs-template
The template system is maintained and developed by the service design manual team. You can contact them at #tech-docs-format on GDS Slack. Note that this is an MVP version and there is a roadmap of planned features and improvements.
Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT licence.
The data is © Crown copyright and available under the terms of the Open Government 3.0 licence.