LocalStack Docs

Getting Started

Basics

LocalStack Docs is using the following technology stack:

Hugo to generate the static site.
Docsy as a theme for Hugo.
GitHub Pages to automatically deploy every commit on the main branch of this repository on docs.localstack.cloud.

Clone the repo

Clone this repository and initialize the Git submodules recursively (themes/docsy is a submodule that again has submodules for vendored assets like fontawesome).

git clone --recurse-submodules --depth 1 git@github.com:localstack/docs.git

This performs a shallow clone, which leads to only the main branch being configured for your remote. To be able to pull/push from/to all branches, please run:

git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" && git fetch

or:

git clone git@github.com:localstack/docs.git
cd docs
git submodule update --init --recursive

Install Hugo

LocalStack Docs is based on the Hugo static site generator.

In order to contribute to LocalStack Docs, you need to install Hugo in order to verify your changes. Make sure to install the extended version of Hugo. You also need to make sure that go is installed in order to run hugo scripts.

Run locally

Once you have Hugo installed, you can start your local server with the following command:

hugo serve

or run in developer mode with automatic reload:

hugo serve --watch=true --disableFastRender -D

Once the server is started, the locally served Docs are available at http://localhost:1313.

Writing content

The whole site is generated with Hugo, a powerful static-site generator.

You can find an extensive documentation on how to use Hugo in their docs, however most of the content is written in plain Markdown.

Make sure to follow the best practices below when contributing content.

Updating developer hub applications

While contributing to the developer hub applications page i.e. editing data/developerhub/applications.json file, make sure to run the create-applications.js script in the scripts folder to create new application pages.

Example usage in the project root:

node scripts/create-applications.js

Best Practices

Please follow these best practices when writing documentation in this repository:

Use the custom command shortcode for all one-liner commands (also when their output is presented). Do not use it for bash scripts with comments. You can find a more detailed description here: localstack/docs#55
Use the ref or relref shortcode when creating non-external links (but still use the markdown native image linking, ref doesn't work there). You can either use ref or relref, the point is to have compile time internal-link checks (which works for both).
Stick to markdown if possible.
Use one line for each sentence in markdown. If you don't add a backslash at the end of the line or add two new-lines, there won't be linebreak in the rendered text.
For snippets, define the correct syntax highlighting. Here's a list of the supported languages: https://gohugo.io/content-management/syntax-highlighting/
If you want to highlight a specific line, there's a feature for that: https://gohugo.io/content-management/syntax-highlighting/#highlighting-in-code-fences
- This is also supported by the command shortcode!
Handling images can be a bit tedious with Hugo. If you want to use images in your post, create a new leaf bundle directory and put the image and the post (named index.md) in there (you can find examples in the docs already, f.e. the cognito service docs).

Then you can use the usual markdown syntax with a relative path (f.e.: ![Alternative_Text](file_next_to_post.png)).

If you want to resize the image, use the figure or img shortcode. For example: {{< img src="cockpit-init-check.png" class="img-fluid shadow rounded" width="150px" >}}

PS.: Feel free to add more best practices here.

Troubleshooting

This section covers common issues when working with LocalStack Docs:

Missing shortcodes

Example error:

Start building sites …
hugo v0.88.1-5BC54738+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=2021-09-04T09:39:19Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
Error: Error building site: "/home/localstack/Repos/docs-test/content/en/get-started/_index.md:57:1": failed to extract shortcode: template for shortcode "alert" not found
Built in 45 ms

Make sure to correctly clone and initialize the git submodules of this repo. For details see the section "Clone the repo" above.
Delete the Hugo Module cache using hugo mod clean or make clean.

localstack/snowflake-docs