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SETUP.md

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Making changes to the book

To develop the book locally, you first need to set up a Python environment with all the packages used to build the book. Edit the book by editing the Jupyter notebooks in the content/ folder. To publish changes to the live book, make a pull request on GitHub. This file contains instructions for all of these steps.

Python environment setup

Follow these steps to set up the textbook locally. You only have to go through these steps once per machine.

These instructions were tested for OSX 10.15. We assume that you know how to run commands on the bash command line. We also assume you have the following command-line tools installed:

  1. Download the book files to your computer. Open a terminal, navigate to a folder for the book files, and run:

    git clone [email protected]:DS-100/textbook.git
cd textbook # Navigates into the book folder

  2. Create a conda environment with the textbook's required packages. Run the following command:

    mamba env create -f environment.yml

    To check that this command succeeds, run:

    mamba env list

    And verify that the textbook environment appears in the list.

  3. Install fswatch. This step is optional, but improves development workflow. If you follow this step, you can use the make watch command to automatically rebuild the book when you make changes locally instead of running make build to manually rebuild the book. Run:

    brew install fswatch

Previewing book changes locally

Follow these steps each time you begin working on the book.

  1. Navigate to the textbook/ folder in your terminal.

  2. Activate the textbook Python environment. Run:

    mamba activate textbook

  3. Checkout a git branch for your work. To make book changes easier to track for collaborators, we don't make changes to the master branch of the textbook. Instead, create a new branch by running:

    git branch [branch_name]
git checkout [branch_name]

    Replace [branch_name] with the name of your branch. For example, if Sam wants to create a branch named sam-decisiontrees, he would run:

    git branch sam-decisiontrees
git checkout sam-decisiontrees

    The git branch command creates a new git branch. It will fail if the branch already exists; skip this command if this is the case. The git checkout command switches to a branch. It will do nothing if you are already on the branch.

    To check that you performed this step successfully, you should see this output when you run git branch:

    $ git branch
master
* sam-decisiontrees

    You should not see this:

    $ git branch
* master
sam-decisiontrees

    This output means that you are still on the master branch, not the one you created.

  4. Start the book build system. Run:

    make build
make -j2 serve

    This step builds the book once, then starts a process that automatically rebuilds the book whenever you change book content. Once this process is running, open http://localhost:8000/ to view the book locally.

  5. Start a JupyterLab notebook server. In a new terminal tab or window, conda to the textbook/ folder and run mamba activate textbook again. Then, run:

    jupyter lab

    This should open your browser to a Jupyter server that lists the textbook files. You should see a content/ folder which contains all the book's content.

  6. Make changes to book content. Every page of the book is a Jupyter notebook within the content/ folder. To change a page of the book, edit the corresponding notebook for that page. Whenever a notebook is saved, the terminal window with the make -j2 serve command will automatically rebuild the book locally, so you can refresh your http://localhost:8000/ browser tab to see how the changes will appear in the final book.

    Note: To see the mapping between textbook pages and Jupyter notebooks, see the content/_toc.yml file. As an aside, saving the content/_toc.yml file will force a complete rebuild of the book which is convenient when changes to a notebook appear not to change the book.

Submitting your changes for review

  1. Commit your changes locally. Once you are ready to submit your changes, run these commands in your terminal:

    git add -A                            # Stages all changes
git status                            # Lists all staged changes
git commit -m '[your commit message]' # Makes a git commit

    Replace [your commit message] with a short (fewer than 72 character) description of your changes. For example:

    git commit -m 'Write 19.3 (PCA in practice)'

  2. Make a pull request. A GitHub pull request allows a collaborator to review and make comments on your changes. Once approved, the collaborator can merge the changes into the live book. Run:

    git push origin HEAD # Push current branch to the same branch on GitHub

    Now, open https://github.com/DS-100/textbook in your browser. You should see a green button titled "Compare & pull request". Click that button. Fill out the form on the resulting page with a title and description for your changes. Finally, click the "Create pull request" button.

    Example pull request: #103