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Managing-ACA-Py-Doc-Site.md

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Managing the ACA-Py Documentation Site

The ACA-Py documentation site is a MkDocs Material site generated from the Markdown files in this repository. Whenever the main branch is updated or a release branch is (possibly temporarily) created, the publish-docs GitHub Action is fired, generating and publishing the documentation for the updated/created branch. The generation process generates the static set of HTML pages for the version in a folder in the gh-pages branch of this repo. The static pages for each (other than the main branch) version are not updated after creation. From time to time, some "extra" maintenance on the versions are needed and this document describes those activities.

Generation Process

The generation process includes the following steps as part of the GitHub Action and mkdocs configuration.

When the GitHub Action fires, it runs a container that carries out the following steps:

  • Checks out the triggering branch, either main or docs-v<version> (e.g docs-v1.2.0rc0).
  • Runs the script scripts/prepmkdocs.sh, which moves and updates some of the markdown files so that they fit into the generated site. See the comments in the scripts for details about the copying and editing done via the script. In general, the copying of files is to put markdown files in the root folder into the docs folder, and to update links that need to be changed to work on the generated site. This allows us to have links working using the GitHub UI and on the generated site.
  • Invokes the mkdocs extension mike that generates the mkdocs HTML pages and then captures and commits them into the gh-pages branch of the repository. It also adds (if needed) a reference to the new version in the site's "versions" dropdown, enabling users to pick the version of the docs they want to look at. The process uses the mkdocs.yml configuration file in generating the site.

Preparing for a Release

When preparing for a release (or even just a PR to main) you can test the documentation site on your local clone using the following steps. The steps assume that you have installed mkdocs on your system. Guidance for that can be found in the MkDocs Material documentation.

  • Note the files changed in your repository that have not been committed. This process will change and then "unchange" files in your local clone. The "unchange" may not be perfect, so you want to be sure that no extra changed files get into your next commit.
  • Run the bash script scripts/prepmkdocs.sh. It will change a number of files in your local repository.
  • Run mkdocs. Watch for warnings of missing documents and broken links in the startup messages. See the notes below for dealing with those issues.
  • Open your browser and browse the site, looking for any issues.
  • Update the documents, mkdocs.yml and the scripts/prepmkdocs.sh as needed, repeating the generation process as needed.
  • When you are happy run scripts/prepmkdocs.sh with the parameter clean. This should undo the changes done by the script. You should check that there no unexpected files changed that you don't want committed into the repo.

If there are missing documents, it may be that they are new Markdown files that have not yet been added to the mkdocs.yml navigation. Update that file to add the new files, and push the changes to the repository in a pull request. There are a few files listed below that we don't generate into the documentation site, and they can be ignored.

  • assets/README.md
  • design/AnoncredsW3CCompatibility.md
  • design/UpgradeViaApi.md
  • features/W3cCredentials.md

If there are broken links, it is likely because there is a Markdown link that works using the GitHub UI (e.g. a relative link to a file in the repo) but doesn't on the generated site. In general there are two ways to fix these:

  • Change the link in the Markdown file so that it is a fully qualified URL vs. a relative link, so that it works in both the GitHub UI and the generated site.
  • Extend the scripts/prepmkdocs.sh sed commands so that the link differs in the GitHub UI and the generated site -- working in both. A pain, but sometimes needed...

Removing RC Releases From the Generated Site

Documentation is added to the site for release candidates (RCs). When those release candidates are replaced, we want to remove their documentation version from the documentation site. In the current GitHub Action, the version documentation is created but never deleted, so the process to remove the documentation for the RC is manual. It would be nice to create a mechanism in the GitHub Action to do this automatically, but its not there yet.

To delete the documentation version, do the following:

  • In your local fork, checkout the gh-pages: git checkout -b gh-pages --track upstream/gh-pages (or use whatever local branch name you want)
  • Check your git status and make sure there are no changes in the branch -- e.g., new files that shouldn't be added to the gh-pages branch. If there are any -- delete the files so they are not added.
  • Remove the folder for the RC. For example rm -rf 1.2.0rc0
  • Edit the versions.json file and remove the reference to the RC release in the file.
  • Push the changes via a PR to the ACA-Py gh-pages branch (don't PR them into main!!).
  • Merge the PR and verify (after a few minutes) that the drop down no longer has the RC in it.

Adding new 0.11.x Releases

The automatic generation process from ACA-Py started with release 0.12.0. Unfortunately, we declared release 0.11.x to be an Long Term Support version and so we still need to add 0.11.x version documentation to the generated site. Here's the (lousy) process to do this. Typically, swcurran will do this and no one else needs to worry about it. But for completeness, here is the process:

  • Follow the instructions in the aries-acapy-docs repository to generate and publish the documentation site for the new 0.11.x version.
  • Have a local copy of the aries-acapy-docs repository. In that repo, run git checkout -b gh-pages --track upstream/gh-pages to checkout a local copy of the generated pages from that repo.
  • In ACA-Py, run git checkout -b gh-pages --track upstream/gh-pages to create a local branch from which you will push a PR.
  • Copy the v0.11.x folder from aries-acapy-docs local to a new 0.11.x folder in the ACA-Py local. Note the "v" that is on the folder in aries-acapy-docs, but not in ACA-Py.
  • Edit the versions.json file to add the 0.11.x reference into the file.
  • Push the changes via a PR to the ACA-Py gh-pages branch (don't PR them into main!!).
  • Merge the PR and verify (after a few minutes) that the drop down includes the 0.11.x version.

Ugly! The LTS for 0.11 ends in January 2025 and this process can be dropped.