Singularity User Docs

This project uses reStructured Text (RST) and ReadTheDocs . As a library for the current theme, Sphinx Python library was used, using Python v. 2.7.

I want to contribute, how can I set up my environment?

First things first, you will need to install the following tools:

Install Python 2.7
After that then you will need to install Sphinx:

pip install -U Sphinx

You're all set! after this you will only need to use your favorite editor for RST files.

How to do stuff on RST?

First of all, it is good to have an idea of some files and their functionality into the project:

Structure of the project

This project maintains the following structure:

Index.rst : contains the sections and the initial table of contents tree, every section is referenced by a tag next to it. (e.g. Quick Start <quick_start>)
All other files, are named as the same reference tag described before, so in the previous example, a correspondent quick_start.rst file exists.
The configuration at the moment of compilation is given by the conf.py file, some more description about this file can be found below.

The conf.py file

This file contains the themes, extensions, variables and naming for files that the compilation process produces. Some important elements are the following:

version : Describes the current version (This one is a short version of the release)
release: Describes the current release (Complete or full version description. For a matter of simplicity we maintain both at the same value)
html_theme: Describes the theme to be used in the ReadtheDocs document.
html_theme_options: Describes the options needed for configuration in the theme (This varies from theme to theme, so we enforce using the options for the Sphinx theme only.
html_context: Options related to which is the github repository and what name it has.
html_logo: The logo for the sidebar
html_favicon: The favicon for the entire project
htmlhelp_basename: Default name of the document generated in Latex, we leave all these as default values.

Cheatsheet to get started with reStructured (RST) Text

Some hints on how to write stuff on RST are described in this section.

1. Create a section/subsection/subsubsection title

Sections are all described as plain text, but have specific notations/underlining for titles and subtitles, very similar to Markup Language.

To create a main section title: A main section title is described as a surrounded text (above and below) of = characters. Like in the following example:

================
New Main Section
================

To create a sub-section: A sub section title is described as a surrounded text (above and below) of - characters. Like in the following example:

---------------
New Sub section
---------------

To create a sub-sub-section: A sub-sub section title is described as a text underlined by = characters. Like in the following example:

New sub-sub section
===================

Last but not least, could happen that you would need to insert a sub-sub-sub section, in that case the title is described as a text underlined by - characters. Like in the following example:

New sub-sub-sub section
-----------------------

2. Reference sections

You might need to reference sections, for that aim you will need to first create the reference above the title you need to reference and second to reference it where you need the link reference. Remember that this type of references is very different than that of hyperlinks, because at the moment of compilation, the latex document generated will have the reference to the page in which that title was referenced. Very cool, huh? Let's see how it works...

Step 1: Create the reference

To create the reference on the section you need to link, you will need to specify a tag, allowed characters contain also - characters but they need to be unique name tags. So for example, in the build-docker-module section we can have something like:

.. _build-docker-module:

-------------------
build-docker-module
-------------------

Note that it might not be necessarily that the section is called just as the same as the tag-name.

Step 2: Reference it!

You can do so by following the next syntax:

The name after the ref tag could also be different, the important thing is that the tag between the < and > is the one that belongs to the previous given tag name. Like in the following example:

:ref:`quickstart <quick-start>`

You can find a lot of information about RST on this site

How to generate the HTML files from RST files?

This is pretty straightforward by going to the root of the project on the command line and then do:

make html SKIPCLI=1

This will generate a folder called _build which inside will have a folder called html containing all the html files you need.

How to generate PDF files?

This is very similar to the previous step, you will need to execute on command line:

make latexpdf SKIPCLI=1

with this, a new folder inside _build will be generated, called latex and in there you can find the pdf file generated from RST (by default it is called "ReadTheDocsTemplate.pdf").

(Additional latex files are also generated if needed.)

How to generate the EPUB files?

Very similar to the previous command, you will just need to execute on a command line:

make epub SKIPCLI=1

This will generate an epub folder inside _build folder. Inside you will find the file with an epub extension.

How are the CLI docs generated?

The Singularity CLI docs are generated using the actual code from Singularity. To do this, we include Singularity as a submodule, and whenever a Makefile target (like make html) is run, Singularity itself is compiled and used to generate the CLI docs.

However, you might not want to compile Singularity, either because you can't on your machine, or because you want to test out a quick change to the docs. If this is the case, you can skip the CLI doc generation using the SKIPCLI argument. For example, to rebuild the HTML docs without including the CLI docs, just run make html SKIPCLI=1.

If Singularity has been updated and you want to synchronize the CLI docs with the new version of Singularity, you'll have to update the submodule. To do this, just run:

git submodule update --remote --merge
git add vendor/src/github.com/sylabs/singularity
git commit

This will update the Singularity submodule to the latest version of the master branch.

cclerget/singularity-userdocs