docs-seed repo

Contains the documentation site implementation.

• Local Setup 💻
• Troubleshooting 💩
• Extra Features 💰
  • Additional config File
  • Live Sync
  • Build without Serve
  • Build Site Partially
  • Exclude Articles from Navigation Tree
  • Webinar Banner
• Build API Reference
• Documentation Best Practices
• docs-seed Syntax Guidelines

Local Setup

This section describes how to run the documentation locally.

Prerequisites

• Install Node.js and restart the machine.
• Choose a documentation repo to which you want to contribute. For example, https://github.com/telerik/xaml-docs.git.
  Referred to as MY-REPO below.
• Pull the documentation repo locally. For example, "D:\Work\xaml-docs".
  Referred to as DOCS-PATH below.

• For products such as Kendo UI for jQuery, UI for ASP.NET MVC, and UI for ASP.NET Core, the documentation is part of the source code repo. For these products, 'DOCS-PATH' is a nested folder in the cloned repo, for example, "D:\Work\kendo-ui-core\docs".

Instructions (without Docker)

1. Install Ruby 2.3.3 (64-bit or 32-bit).

Select Add Ruby executables to your PATH and Associate .rb and .rbw files with this Ruby installation during the installation.

2. Download and extract the Ruby DevKit 4.7.2 (64-bit or 32-bit). Note the location of the extracted archive (for example: C:\RubyDevKit).

3. Install and init the Ruby DevKit. For more information, see here.

cd C:\RubyDevKit
ruby dk.rb init
ruby dk.rb install 

4. Install RubyGems 3.2.29.

gem update --system 3.2.29

5. Install Bundler 2.3.11.

gem install bundler -v 2.3.11

If you experience SSL errors with Bundler, similar to the one described in RubyGems SSL Certificate Update, follow the solution steps from Bundler.io - Installing new RubyGems certificates.

6. Clone the docs-seed repo.

git clone git@github.com:telerik/docs-seed.git

7. Go to the directory for the pulled docs-seed repo (for example, D:\Work\docs-seed).
8. Open your preferred Bash-enabled terminal (for example, gitBash).
9. Run the following command and pass the DOCS-PATH path (the quotes are mandatory):

sh copy_local.sh "D:\Work\xaml-docs"

If you are running the documentation on a macOS or another OS where the robocopy command is unavailable, pass a second parameter to the copy_local.sh script: sh copy_local.sh "D:\Work\xaml-docs" true.

10. In the terminal, navigate to the DOCS-PATH directory.

cd D:\Work\xaml-docs

11. Install the required dependencies:

bundle install 

12. Run the following command in the root folder of the cloned documentation repo:

bundle exec jekyll serve

13. In your browser, navigate to the server address shown in the terminal: http://127.0.0.1:4000/.
    For documentation sets nested in the documentation repo, you need to navigate to the respective folder. For example, for the WPF documentation, the correct server address will be http://127.0.0.1:4000/devtools/wpf/.

If you can't open the URL, replace the 127.0.0.1 with localhost (http://localhost:4000).

If you want to change the host or port, pass the --host or --port arguments to the command from Step 12. For example, bundle exec jekyll serve --host=0.0.0.0 --port=1234.

Instructions (with Docker)

Caution As of November 2023, the support for the docs-seed setup via Docker is limited. See Instructions (without Docker) instead.

1. Ensure that you have installed Docker with the default settings enabled. See the official Docker installation guide.

You can use Docker Community Edition (CE).

2. Clone the docs-seed repo.

git clone git@github.com:telerik/docs-seed.git

3. Go to the directory in which you've pulled it (for example, D:\Work\docs-seed).
4. Open a terminal of your choice (for example, gitBash).
5. Run the following command by passing the DOCS-PATH path (the quotes are mandatory):

sh copy_local.sh "D:\Work\xaml-docs"

If you are running the documentation on a macOS or another OS where the robocopy command is unavailable, pass a second parameter to the copy_local.sh script: sh copy_local.sh "D:\Work\xaml-docs" true.

6. Go to the DOCS-PATH directory.
7. Open the Dockerfile with an editor
8. Delete the following two rows:

ADD Gemfile ${APP_ROOT}/
ADD Gemfile.lock ${APP_ROOT}/

9. Add the following row:

ENV BUNDLER_VERSION=2.1.4

10. Delete the GemFile.lock file
11. Open a terminal of your choice (for example, gitBash).
12. Execute the following bash command in the root folder (where the Dockerfile is located).

sh start-docs.sh

13. Open the documentation site on the server address shown in the terminal: http://0.0.0.0:4000/. If you can't open the URL, replace the 0.0.0.0 with localhost: http://localhost:4000. For example, for the WPF documentation, this will be http://0.0.0.0:4000/devtools/wpf/.
14. To stop the web site and the container in which it has been served, navigate to the terminal in which you've executed the previous command, and press CTRL+C. On passing an additional config file for the WPF and Silverlight documentation, refer to this section.

Troubleshooting

Get More Detailed Error Message

To get more information and a full stack trace of the error, add --trace after your jekyll command. For example, bundle exec jekyll build --trace.

Does Not Serve

You executed sh start-docs.sh but you did not see any Jekyll output. Instead, the command ended with the input device is not a TTY. If you are using mintty, try prefixing the command with 'winpty'.

This happens when using Git Bash with the MinTTY console. This console does not allow combinations such as Ctrl+C to pass to the Docker container and that's why you get such an error.

To solve this issue, prefix the command with winpty:

winpty sh start-docs.sh

Aa an alternative, re-install Git Bash and choose the default Windows terminal this time. For more details, refer to the Docker for Windows: Interactive Sessions in MinTTY Git Bash post.

Ctrl+C Does Not Work

When you want to stop serving the docs, you may have to repeat the Ctrl+C command or press Enter after it.

.gitignore Is always Modified

The scripts that copy the seed repo to the content repo (MY-REPO) also update the .gitignore file to avoid creating unstaged changes together with the work files that must not be committed. If you keep getting the .gitignore checked out, identify the changes as compared to the original and commit the version that matches what the tool generates to your repo.

Performance

Docker is a resource-intensive tool. If you are not using it on a daily basis, consider preventing it from running on startup. Right-click its Tray icon and navigate to Settings > General. Uncheck Start Docker when you log in. This can save you time when booting up/logging in, but you will need to explicitly start Docker before working on any docs-seed documentation.

Also, it tends to require a lot of HDD space, which may be an issue if you are running it on an SSD drive with a limited capacity. You can reduce its quota by navigating to the Settings dialog > Advanced and either change the image location, and/or reduce its max size. This also lets you limit its RAM consumption.

Encoding Problems while Building

When you try to build the documentation site, you may see an error including the following incomplete "\n" on UTF-16LE message. It might be caused because of different things. Use the following steps to try to fix or workaround it:

1. Ensure Node.js is installed by typing node -v in a command prompt. The machine must be restarted after a Node.js installation.
2. Allow files with long paths using the following command:

git config --system core.longpaths true

1. Add the following System Environment Variables

• JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
• LANG: en_GB.UTF-8

1. Modify the runtimes.rb file in the execJs gem by changing the UTF-16LE with the UTF-8 value. For details, see the instructions here or here. The runtimes.rb file is located in [Ruby Installation folder]\lib\ruby\gems\2.3.0\gems\execjs-2.7.0\lib\execjs.

Known Error Messages

• jekyll 3.3.1 | Error: [prev_next plugin] Comparing the pages notes.md and sitemap.xml failed

  • Usually happens when a new article does not have position property in the front-matter. To solve this issue, add a number to the position property. If you want some articles to sort alphabetically, they need to have the same position value.
  • It might also happen if a folder or a file is magically added to the docs repo folder. To solve this issue, clean the folder and make a fresh clone of the docs repo.

• jekyll 3.3.1 | Error: 404 Not Found—This is often observed when you create a new documentations and when no entry for the product in the Top Navigation list exists. To solve this issue, add an entry for your documentation as in the feat: add MAUI to top navigation commit for the /_plugins/top_navigation.rb file. If the Telerik Web Team do not have the Top Navigation ready yet, you can temporarily reuse the top navigation value property from another product to make the build successful.

Extra Features

You might find the following features useful:

• Additional config File
• Live Sync
• Build without Serve
• Build Site Partially
• Exclude Articles from Navigation Tree
• Webinar Banner

Additional Config File

To add an additional config.yml file, pass it to the above command as follows:

sh start-docs.sh _silverlight.yml

LiveSync

To monitor the changes you are making on the built documentation, execute the following command in a new terminal in the root directory of the site:

sh watch.sh

You need to have Node.js installed.

Only Build

To only run jekyll build and not jekyll serve, execute the following bash command:

sh build-docs.sh

This can be useful if you want to (or already have) set up a local IIS to point to the _site folder in your documentation repo. This allows you to also test redirects that jekyll serve does not support.

Build Site Partially

To speed up the building time of the web site, you can pass only specific parts of it—the folders you want to include in the site.

To achieve this, execute the sh modify-config.sh script with passing the corresponding arguments which are:

• -i,--include—The folders you want to include in the final build. Multiple folders are separated with a comma. No spaces are allowed.
• -c,--config—The path to an additional config file which will be used for the build (more about additional config file).
• -s,--serve—Accepts true/false. Indicates whether the Jekyll will only build or build and serve.
• -d,--docker—Accepts true/false. Indicates whether the site will run in Docker (set --docker=true if you're using Docker).

For example, if you want to build only the documentation for two controls, the Barcode and the Chart, you are using Docker, and you have an extra config YAML file. Then you have to open a terminal and execute the following command:

sh modify-config.sh --include=controls/barcode,controls/Chart --docker=true --config=_extra.yml

Exclude Articles from Navigation Tree

If you have some obsolete articles or whole folders that you need to hide from the navigation tree, use the exclude_navigation array in the settings of the config.yml file in your repository. The example below shows how to exclude listing all articles in knowledge-base folder as well as sharepoint folder.

For example, from https://github.com/telerik/ajax-docs/blob/master/_config.yml#L6, exclude_navigation: ["sharepoint/2007/*" ,"knowledge-base/*"]

Webinar Banner

Moved in wiki under the Announcements banner article.

Build API Reference

A DocFX-based infrastructure generates the API reference portion of the site for you. To use it, you need the following:

• The docs-seed repo on your build machine.

• An API ref link in your table of contents on the left. To enable it, add the following line in your _config.yml file:

  _config.yml

    `api_reference_url: "api/"`
  

• A folder on a shared network location that the build can access, and that contains the .dll and .xml files you want generated.

• The assets for building the API reference in your repo. You can start by copying existing assets, for example, from WinForms. Note that the templates are plain HTML for the time being, so you must keep them in sync with your repo code manually: update the footer template with the generated HTML of your own docs, make sure the search template can reach the scripts it needs (can be an issue if you have cache busting enabled in your own repo). Also, update the index.md file to have the contents suitable for your case. Keep them updated if you change your own repo as well.

• An MSBuild step in your content repo builds that will take the binaries, XML files and content repo, build the HTML files for the API ref, and copy them to the _site/api folder in your content repo.

  This build is executed through the _buildApi/BuildApiReference.proj file. For example, in the VS command prompt: msbuild.exe BuildApiReference.proj /p:LatestBinariesPath=\\\\someNetworkServer\MySourceFiles;DocsRepoName=blazor-docs;DocumentationBaseUrl=https://docs.telerik.com/blazor-ui;DocsRepoApiAssetsFolder=_assetsApi;HasApiFilter=true.

  note Depending on the machine culture, you might need to use a comma , instead of a semi-colon ; otherwise you will get a DocsRepoName is not defined error (CheckRequiredProperties target) -> D:\DocsSeed\_buildApi\BuildApiReference.proj(26,5): error : DocsRepoName is not defined (Ex. winforms-docs)

  Here is a list of the build parameters and their purpose:

  • LatestBinariesPath—The path to where you have the .dll+.xml pairs of code you want documented. The format is usually resembles \\\\someNetworkServer\MySourceFiles or C:\work\myFolder. The escaping of the backslashes is an example for using this as a build parameter.

  • DocsRepoName—The name of the repo with your contents. By default, the build expects that the docs-seed repo and the content repo are located in adjacent folders. So, for example, pass only blazor-docs or winforms-docs, or teststudio/docs (when the docs are nested further down in a folder inside your repo).

  • DocumentationBaseUrl—The base URL of your docs when on the live server. Used for the sitemap.xml file. For example, https://docs.telerik.com/blazor-ui/.

  • DocsRepoApiAssetsFolder—This is the location for the build assets specific to your repo (at the time of writing, search, footer templates, feedback form, plus some styles). If you copy from an existing repo, this is always _assetsApi.

  • HasApiFilter—An optional parameter in case you want to avoid generating API reference docs for some classes or their members. See the DocFX docs on the matter for syntax and examples. To use this filter, you must add a file in your repo with the desired filter contents, and put it in <DocsRepoApiAssetsFolder>\filterConfig.yml. The file is always at the root of the API assets folder, and is always called filterConfig.yml. Here's what DocFX generates at the time of writing (10 Jul 2019, DocFX version 2.40.5):

    C#

    //GENERATED
    public string publicTest;
    protected string protectedTest;
    protected internal string protectedInternalTest;
    
    //NOT GENERATED
    private string privateTest;
    internal string internalTest;
    private protected string privateProtectedTest;
    

Documentation Best Practices

If you need to create new documentation (for example, for a new product), use docs-content-seed repository as an auxiliary part to this one.

For best practices and industry standards on creating and maintaining documentation, go to the public Progress DevTools Style Guide.

docs-seed Syntax Guidelines

To ensure the syntax you use when you add or edit the documentation will properly render the content, read the syntax guidelines in the docs-seed Wiki.