Technical Documentation

Contributing

Making documentation changes (using the Github interface)

At the bottom of each page of the hosted GDS Way there is a View source link. This link will take you to to the corresponding Github page where you can use the pencil icon (:pencil:) in the interface to propose edits to a page.

Once you have made your changes you can write a description, click the green Propose changes button, and on the following page clickj the green Create pull request button.

Making documentation changes (locally)

To make changes edit the source files in the source folder.

The bulk of the documentaion that makes up the GDS Way can be found in files located in the source/standards and source/manuals directories.

Adding documentation

You can add a new file to the source folder (or an appropriate sub-folder) to create a new page.

It is probably easiest to copy an existing file and change the name if you are new to writing text in markdown.

You then need to manually add your new page to one of the menu files in source/partials/_nav... for it to appear in one of the menus.

Raising and merging PRs to this repo

To submit changes to this repo, raise a PR in the usual way and these will be regularly reviewed by The GDS Way forum group that meets once a month. Reviewing and merging PRs at any time is fine, the forum will also review merged PRs as part of its regular meeting.

Any open non-draft PRs that have been more than 1 month without further comments, suggestions or alterations will be merged by the forum group unless there is an explicit "DO NOT MERGE" somewhere in the title or description.

There is a GDS Slack channel #gds-way where these are discussed.

Making functional changes

The GDS Way is built from the Tech Docs Template repository. Any functional changes and bug fixes should be made to that project first, then follow the instructions here to update the GDS Way.

Running Locally

Getting started

To preview or build the website, we need to use the terminal.

Install Ruby and Bundler

Install Ruby with Rubygems, preferably with a Ruby version manager, and the Bundler gem.

Clone the repository

Clone the repository using:

git clone https://github.com/alphagov/gds-way.git
cd gds-way

Additional commands for Apple silicon

If you are using a Mac with Apple silicon (such as an M1 chip), you must run additional commands.

Note If you are using an Intel Mac, skip this and go to the ‘Install the required gems’ step.

Tell Bundler to use libraries relating to the Apple silicon architecture:

 bundle lock --add-platform arm64-darwin-21
 bundle config --local specific_platform true
 bundle config --local build.ffi --enable-libffi-alloc

We need to make sure the EventMachine gem is built with OpenSSL from Homebrew and not the default macOS version of OpenSSL.

First, install OpenSSL 1.1:

brew install openssl@1.1

Do not worry if Homebrew says OpenSSL 1.1 is already installed.

Then tell your Mac to use the Homebrew installation of OpenSSL 1.1 when looking for packages (this will last until you end your terminal session):

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$(brew --prefix openssl@1.1)/lib/pkgconfig

Install the required gems

Then in the application folder type the following to install the required gems:

bundle config set path 'vendor/bundle'
bundle install

Preview

Whilst writing documentation we can run a middleman server to preview how the published version will look in the browser. After saving a change the preview in the browser will automatically refresh.

The preview is only available on our 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.

Build

If you want to publish the website without using a build script you may need to build the static HTML files.

Type the following to build the HTML:

bundle exec middleman build

This will create a build subfolder in the application folder which contains the HTML and asset files ready to be published.

Deploy

This repo is continuously deployed from the main branch by GitHub Actions, using the workflow defined in /.github/workflows/bundle_and_release.yml.

Licence

Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT License. This covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation.

bvhme/gds-way