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dovecot-ce-documentation

Static website content for Dovecot CE documentation.

Site Generation Software

The site is statically generated via the VitePress framework.

VitePress is a JavaScript application. The content pages use markdown, with the ability to layer additional VitePress (and Vue) functionality on top of it, i.e. the ability to use templates/variables to generate page content.

Most maintenance tasks on the JavaScript code use simple functionality using basic JavaScript components. The Mozilla reference page might be useful if there are any questions: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference

Markdown reference: https://www.markdownguide.org/

Configuration of VitePress is in the .vitepress/config.js file.

Prerequisites

From VitePress:

  • Node.js version 18+

Warning

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (and prior) does NOT contain a new enough version of nodejs.

Either run in a container (see https://hub.docker.com/_/node) or install via out-of-band packages (see https://github.com/nodesource/distributions).

Installation

To install, run:

$ npm install

# Or using bun:
$ bun install

Local Testing Server

VitePress provides a local development server that will do real-time updates when source files change.

Important

This must be run from the base of the project!

Run with:

$ npm run docs:dev

# Or using bun:
$ bun run docs:dev

Note

Certain features (such as search) will not work in testing/dev mode and require the documentation to be statically built and served.

Documentation Generation

To generate the static documentation, run:

$ npm run docs:build

# Or using bun:
$ bun run docs:build

Generated documentation will be output in the docs/.vitepress/dist directory. The statically generated documentation can be displayed locally by running:

$ npm run docs:preview

# Or using bun (https://bun.sh/):
$ bun run docs:preview

Debugging

Depending on when an issue occurs, errors may be displayed on the development screen (and in the terminal where the docs:dev command is being run).

However, some errors only occur when viewing a page, and will oftentimes result in a blank or incomplete page render. In these cases, looking at the browser developer console will generally show the error that has occurred.

Docker Container

An updated Docker container is produced after every code addition, and can be used to view the documentation locally.

Container installation information can be found at: https://github.com/dovecot/documentation/pkgs/container/documentation

The container exposes a web server on port 80, and the documentation is available in the 2.4 directory.

Example

Provide access to Dovecot documentation at http://localhost:8080/:

docker run --rm \
  -p 8080:80 \
  ghcr.io/dovecot/documentation:latest

Dovecot-specific VitePress Features

Directory Structure

docs/ contains the pages to be rendered by VitePress into the site.

Sidebar Generation

The sidebar is automatically generated via the vitepress-sidebar plugin.

It will create the sidebar based on the file layout in the docs/ directory.

The title is configured via the title parameter in the frontmatter content of the page.

Any page can be excluded from output by setting the exclude parameter to true in the frontmatter content of the page.

Header titles can be set via the index.md file in the folder. This file can be hidden by setting the exclude parameter to true.

Dovecot Data Generation

Dovecot has several systems (configuration, doveadm, events, etc.) that can be added throughout the code and need a way to collect and handle the documentation in a single location.

This is accomplished by maintaining a "database" of these elements in a special data file. These data files can then be processed via simple javascript and HTML templating to vastly simplify the output of this common data.

Additionally, this allows this information to be maintained in a single place and shown on multiple pages. For example, it is useful on a plugins page to show all configuration settings related to that plugin, but it is also useful to have a page that shows all information on all plugin settings.

The data files live in the base /data directory. Each file attempts to be self-documenting, but they are all essentially large JSON objects. Developers should need to know basically no JavaScript to be able to edit the files.

Dovecot Markdown Extensions

Markdown has been extended to allow various Dovecot-specific tasks to be performed.

This Markdown works in both the base pages and in many database fields (see documentation in data/*.data.js for the fields that support Markdown).

Note

All Dovecot extended Markdown commands are wrapped in [[...]] syntax.

Doveadm Commands

Syntax: [[doveadm,command_string(,args)]] (args is optional)

command_string should NOT include "doveadm" - this will automatically be added in the output.

If args is set, it is appended to the display as doveadm arguments. Example:

# [[doveadm,foo,--bar <baz>]] results in:
<a href="PATH_TO_FOO_COMMAND">doveadm foo --bar &lt;baz&gt;</a>

Events

Syntax: [[event,event_name]]

event_name is the name of the Dovecot event to link to.

Link

Syntax: [[link,tag(,optional_text)]]

VitePress does not support inter-documentation linking, by default.

However, this wiki-like linking is useful and has been custom implemented in Dovecot's implementation of VitePress.

Dovecot linking "tags" are defined in a page's Frontmatter (the YAML at the top of the page) under the dovecotlinks key.

dovecotlinks keys are the link tags. Values are one of two formats:

  • If text, this the default text associated with the tag. A link to this tag will link the to base page.
  • If an object, it must define two sub-keys: hash and text
    • hash is the anchor on the page to link to when using the tag. The '#' MUST not be present. Hash strings can be determined by mousing over headers on a page. (Roughly: every non-character is converted to '-'.)
    • text is the default text for the tag.

Man Pages

Syntax: [[man,command_name(,hash,section)]]

Links to the man page.

command_name is the command to link to (e.g., doveconf).

Hash is the section number. It defaults to empty.

Section is the section number. It defaults to 1.

Plugin

Syntax: [[plugin,plugin_name(,text)]]

Links to the plugin page.

If text is set, it is used as the link text instead of the plugin name.

RFC

Syntax: [[rfc,rfc_number(,section)]]

Links to the RFC page (external).

section is optional and will link to the RFC subsection.

Settings

Syntax: [[setting,setting_name(,args)]] Syntax: [[setting_text,setting_name(,text)]]

For the setting variant, if args is set, it is appended to the display as a setting value. Example:

# [[setting,foo,5]] results in:
<a href="PATH_TO_FOO_SETTING">foo = 5</a>

For the setting_text variant, if text is set, it is used as the link text. Example:

# [[setting_text,foo,bar]] results in:
<a href="PATH_TO_FOO_SETTING">bar</a>

Variable

Syntax: [[variable(,section)]]

Link to the Settings Variable page.

By default, links to the base page.

If section is defined, will link to the sub-section. Valid sub-sections:

  • auth
  • config (default)
  • global
  • login
  • mail-service-user
  • mail-user

Updates (added, changed, deprecated, removed)

Syntax: [[(update),tag_name]]

Create a update tag based on a tag_name.

The tag_name must be defined in data/updates.js.

Example: [[changed,tag_name]]

Other Markdown Extensions

TODO Container

Syntax:

::: todo
TODO text contents
:::

Outputs a formatted TODO container, using the (optional) TODO text contents as the body.