gem5 website

The website for gem5 is written in Jekyll markdown. It serves as the primarily source of information for those interested in the gem5 project. In the spirit of gem5's community-led, open governance model anyone who wishes may make contributions and improvements to the website. This README outlines the basic procedure to do so, as well as notes the directory structure and general guidelines.

Development

You may clone the repository, and run a local instance of the website using:

git clone https://github.com/gem5/website
cd website
bundle
jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config_dev.yml

The jekyll server may also be run using:

bundle exec jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config_dev.yml

Changes may be made and committed using:

git add <changed files>
git commit

The commit message must adhere to our style. The first line of the commit is the "header". The header line must not exceed 65 characters and adequately describe the change. To be consistent with commits made to the gem5 repository, the header should start with a website tag followed by a colon.

After this, a more detailed description of the commit can be included. This is inserted below the header, separated by an empty line. Including a description is optional but strongly recommended for complex changes. The description may span multiple lines, and multiple paragraphs. No line in the description may exceed 72 characters. We also recommend adding reference to any relevant GitHub issue so the context of a change can be more easily understood.

Below is an example of how a gem5 website commit message should be formatted:

website: This is an example header

This is a more detailed description of the commit. This can be as long as
is necessary to adequately describe the change.

A description may spawn multiple paragraphs if desired.

Issue: https://github.com/gem5/gem5/issues/123

Submitting a contribution

We utilize GitHub to review changes made to the website. To make changes, follow the steps below.

Fork the gem5 repository on GitHub from https://github.com/gem5/website/.
Create a new branch in your forked repository for your changes.
Commit your changes to the new branch.
Push the branch to your forked repository.
Open a pull request from your branch in your forked repository to the main gem5 website repository.

If you have not signed up for an account on the github (https://github.com/), you first have to create an account.

Go to https://github.com/
Click "Sign up" in the upper right corner.

Changes are required to have a Change-ID, which can be added using the pre-commit hook. This can be installed via the following:

pip install pre-commit
pre-commit install

Stable vs. Develop branch

The rule for when to work on the stable vs. develop branch is as follows:

If the change applies to the current gem5 stable, then the change should be on the stable branch of the gem5 website.
If the change cannot work on gem5 stable and requires updates to gem5 that are only found on gem5 develop, then the change should be on the develop branch of the website.

When a new version of gem5 is released, the develop branch is merged into the stable branch. When the website's stable and develop branches diverge, we merge stable into develop.

Code Review

Once a change has been submitted to GitHub, you may view the change at https://github.com/gem5/website/pulls.

Through the GitHub pull request we strongly advise you add reviewers to your change. GitHub will automatically notify those you assign. We recommend you add both Bobby R. Bruce bbruce@ucdavis.edu (@BobbyRBruce) and Jason Lowe-Power jason@lowepower.com (@powerjg) as reviewers.

Reviewers will review the change. For non-trivial edits, it is not unusual for a change to receive feedback from reviewers that they want incorporated before flagging as acceptable for merging into the gem5 website repository. All communications between reviewers and contributors should be done in a polite manner. Rude and/or dismissive remarks will not be tolerated.

Once your change has been accepted by reviewers a maintainer will squash and merge your pull request into the gem5 website repository. into the gem5 website repository. The website will be automatically updated with your changes within 30 minutes.

Directory Structure

_data

Yaml files, for easily editing navigation.

_includes

Page section and main navigation bar are here.

_layouts

Different layout templates used on the site.

default: base layout
page: any regular page
toc: a page that requires table of contents
post: blog post page
documentation: documentation page

_pages

All pages (other than the index.html home page) should be placed in this folder. There is a subfolder /documentation where pages meant for the documentation part of the site can be kept. This is purely for organization and ease of finding things. Reorganizing the _pages folder should not affect the site.

_posts

Holds blog posts.

_sass

All custom css is kept in _layout.scss.

assets

Images and javascript files.

blog

Holds index.html of blog page.

Navigation

To edit the navigation bar: Go to _includes/header.html

Navigation element without submenu:

<li class="nav-item {% if page.title == "Home" %}active{% endif %}">
  <a class="nav-link" href="{{ "/" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">Home</a>
</li>

Replace Home in {% if page.title == "Home" %} to your page's title. Replace / in href="{{ "/" | prepend: site.baseurl }}" to the page's permalink. Replace Home in >Home</a> with what you want the navbar to show.

Navigation element with submenu:

<li class="nav-item dropdown {% if page.parent == "about" %}active{% endif %}">
  <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" id="navbarDropdownMenuLink" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
    About
  </a>
  <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="navbarDropdownMenuLink">
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="{{ "/about" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">About</a>
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="{{ "/publications" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">Publications</a>
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="{{ "/governance" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">Governance</a>
  </div>
</li>

Replace about in {% if page.parent == "about" %} with a word that will represent the parent of all pages in the submenu. Make sure the frontmatter in those pages includes parent: [your_parent_identifier]. Replace the permalink and title in all the <a></a> submenu items.

Documentation

Edit Documentation Navigation

Structure:

Parent Topic:

subtopic
subtopic
...

Parent Topic:

subtopic
...

To edit the documentation navigation, simply edit the documentation.yml file in the _data folder. docs lists the parent topics, and within it subitems lists its subtopics. This is an example of how it should be formatted:

title: Documentation

docs:
  - title: Getting Started     # Parent Topic
    id: gettingstarted     # see below
    url: /gettingstarted     # see below
    subitems:
      - page: Introduction     # Name that will appear in navigation
        url: /introduction     # url
      - page: Dependencies
        url: /dependencies
  - title: Debugging     # Parent Topic
    id: debugging     # see below
    subitems:
      - page: Piece 1
        url: /piece1
      - page: Piece 2
        url: /piece2

Notes: id is an identifier that links subtopics to its parent. It is required and must not contain any spaces. The subtopic pages must include in the frontmatter parent: id with id being the parent's id.

url is optional for parent topics, if a parent topic has its own a page. If no url is provided, it will automatically link to the first subtopic.

Add New Page

To add a new documentation page, first add frontmatter at the top of either the markdown or html file to be added.

---
layout: documentation     // specify page layout
title: Getting Started     // title of the page
parent: gettingstarted     // see below
permalink: /gettingstarted/     // url
---

Notes:

parent should be the exact same as the id of its parent topic that is assigned to it in _data/documentation.yml file. (If the page is the parent topic, parent is the same as the id assigned to it in _data/documentation.yml file.)

Place the file in _pages/documentation. Make sure to add the page to the documentation navigation, explained by the section above.

Indicating outdated information

To flag information in a page as valid, use an outdated notice in the .md file of that page:

{: .outdated-notice}
This page is outdated!

This will be replaced by a warning element containing the text "Note: This page is outdated.", followed by the content succeeding the notice - in this case, "This page is outdated!". In this way, you can add additional information explaining why or how the page is outdated, and general tips on what to do to mitigate this issue.