Documentation Guide

Documentation Guide

This page intends to cover the documentation handling for OPNFV. OPNFV projects are expected to create a variety of document types, according to the nature of the project. Some of these are common to projects that develop/integrate features into the OPNFV platform, e.g. Installation Instructions and User/Configurations Guides. Other document types may be project-specific.

Getting Started with Documentation for Your Project

OPNFV documentation is automated and integrated into our git & gerrit toolchains.

We use RST document templates in our repositories and automatically render to HTML and PDF versions of the documents in our artifact store, our WiKi is also able to integrate these rendered documents directly allowing projects to use the revision controlled documentation process for project information, content and deliverables. Read this page which elaborates on how documentation is to be included within opnfvdocs.

Licencing your documentation

All contributions to the OPNFV project are done in accordance with the OPNFV licensing requirements. Documentation in OPNFV is contributed in accordance with the Creative Commons 4.0 licence. All documentation files need to be licensed using the creative commons licence. The following example may be applied in the first lines of all contributed RST files:

.. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
.. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
.. (c) <optionally add copywriters name>

Or if you want to use the `SPDX https://spdx.org/>`_ Shorthand vs. the Creative Commons URL

How and where to store the document content files in your repository

All documentation for your project should be structured and stored in the <repo>/docs/ directory. The documentation toolchain will look in these directories and be triggered on events in these directories when generating documents.

Document structure and contribution

A general structure is proposed for storing and handling documents that are common across many projects but also for documents that may be project specific. The documentation is divided into three areas Release, Development and Testing. Templates for these areas can be found under opnfvdocs/docs/templates/.

Project teams are encouraged to use templates provided by the opnfvdocs project to ensure that there is consistency across the community. Following representation shows the expected structure:

docs/
├── development
│   ├── design
│   ├── overview
│   └── requirements
├── release
│   ├── configguide
│   ├── installation
│   ├── release-notes
│   ├── scenarios
│   │   └── scenario.name
│   └── userguide
└── testing
    ├── developer
    └── user

Release documentation

Release documentation is the set of documents that are published for each OPNFV release. These documents are created and developed following the OPNFV release process and milestones and should reflect the content of the OPNFV release. These documents have a master index.rst file in the <opnfvdocs> repository and extract content from other repositories. To provide content into these documents place your <content>.rst files in a directory in your repository that matches the master document and add a reference to that file in the correct place in the corresponding index.rst file in opnfvdocs/docs/release/.

Platform Overview: opnfvdocs/docs/release/overview

• Note this document is not a contribution driven document
• Content for this is prepared by the Marketing team together with the opnfvdocs team

Installation Instruction: <repo>/docs/release/installation

• Folder for documents describing how to deploy each installer and scenario descriptions
• Release notes will be included here <To Confirm>
• Security related documents will be included here
• Note that this document will be compiled into ‘OPNFV Installation Instruction’

User Guide: <repo>/docs/release/userguide

• Folder for manuals to use specific features
• Folder for documents describing how to install/configure project specific components and features
• Can be the directory where API reference for project specific features are stored
• Note this document will be compiled into ‘OPNFV userguide’

Configuration Guide: <repo>/docs/release/configguide

• Brief introduction to configure OPNFV with its dependencies.

Release Notes: <repo>/docs/release/release-notes

• Changes brought about in the release cycle.
• Include version details.

Testing documentation

Documentation created by test projects can be stored under two different sub directories /user or /developemnt. Release notes will be stored under <repo>/docs/release/release-notes

User documentation: <repo>/testing/user/ Will collect the documentation of the test projects allowing the end user to perform testing towards a OPNFV SUT e.g. Functest/Yardstick/Vsperf/Storperf/Bottlenecks/Qtip installation/config & user guides.

Development documentation: <repo>/testing/developent/ Will collect documentation to explain how to create your own test case and leverage existing testing frameworks e.g. developer guides.

Development Documentation

Project specific documents such as design documentation, project overview or requirement documentation can be stored under /docs/development. Links to generated documents will be dislayed under Development Documentaiton section on docs.opnfv.org. You are encouraged to establish the following basic structure for your project as needed:

Requirement Documentation: <repo>/docs/development/requirements/

• Folder for your requirement documentation
• For details on requirements projects’ structures see the Requirements Projects page.

Design Documentation: <repo>/docs/development/design

• Folder for your upstream design documents (blueprints, development proposals, etc..)

Project overview: <repo>/docs/development/overview

• Folder for any project specific documentation.

Including your Documentation

In your project repository

Add your documentation to your repository in the folder structure and according to the templates listed above. The documentation templates you will require are available in opnfvdocs/docs/templates/ repository, you should copy the relevant templates to your <repo>/docs/ directory in your repository. For instance if you want to document userguide, then your steps shall be as follows:

git clone ssh://<your_id>@gerrit.opnfv.org:29418/opnfvdocs.git
cp -p opnfvdocs/docs/userguide/* <my_repo>/docs/userguide/

You should then add the relevant information to the template that will explain the documentation. When you are done writing, you can commit the documentation to the project repository.

git add .
git commit --signoff --all
git review

In OPNFVDocs Composite Documentation

In toctree

To import project documents from project repositories, we use submodules.

Each project is stored in opnfvdocs/docs/submodule/ as follows:

To include your project specific documentation in the composite documentation, first identify where your project documentation should be included. Say your project userguide should figure in the ‘OPNFV Userguide’, then:

vim opnfvdocs/docs/release/userguide.introduction.rst

This opens the text editor. Identify where you want to add the userguide. If the userguide is to be added to the toctree, simply include the path to it, example:

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1

 submodules/functest/docs/userguide/index
 submodules/bottlenecks/docs/userguide/index
 submodules/yardstick/docs/userguide/index
 <submodules/path-to-your-file>

As Hyperlink

It’s pretty common to want to reference another location in the OPNFV documentation and it’s pretty easy to do with reStructuredText. This is a quick primer, more information is in the Sphinx section on Cross-referencing arbitrary locations.

Within a single document, you can reference another section simply by:

This is a reference to `The title of a section`_

Assuming that somewhere else in the same file there a is a section title something like:

The title of a section
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It’s typically better to use :ref: syntax and labels to provide links as they work across files and are resilient to sections being renamed. First, you need to create a label something like:

.. _a-label:

The title of a section
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Note

The underscore (_) before the label is required.

Then you can reference the section anywhere by simply doing:

This is a reference to :ref:`a-label`

or:

This is a reference to :ref:`a section I really liked <a-label>`

Note

When using :ref:-style links, you don’t need a trailing underscore (_).

Because the labels have to be unique, it usually makes sense to prefix the labels with the project name to help share the label space, e.g., sfc-user-guide instead of just user-guide.

Once you have made these changes you need to push the patch back to the opnfvdocs team for review and integration.

git add .
git commit --signoff --all
git review

Be sure to add the project leader of the opnfvdocs project as a reviewer of the change you just pushed in gerrit.

‘doc8’ Validation

It is recommended that all rst content is validated by doc8 standards. To validate your rst files using doc8, install doc8.

sudo pip install doc8

doc8 can now be used to check the rst files. Execute as,

doc8 --ignore D000,D001 <file>

Testing: Build Documentation Locally

Composite OPNFVDOCS documentation

To build whole documentation under opnfvdocs/, follow these steps:

Install virtual environment.

sudo pip install virtualenv
cd /local/repo/path/to/project

Download the OPNFVDOCS repository.

git clone https://gerrit.opnfv.org/gerrit/opnfvdocs

Change directory to opnfvdocs & install requirements.

cd opnfvdocs
sudo pip install -r etc/requirements.txt

Update submodules, build documentation using tox & then open using any browser.

cd opnfvdocs
git submodule update --init
tox -edocs
firefox docs/_build/html/index.html

Note

Make sure to run tox -edocs and not just tox.

Individual project documentation

To test how the documentation renders in HTML, follow these steps:

Install virtual environment.

sudo pip install virtualenv
cd /local/repo/path/to/project

Download the opnfvdocs repository.

git clone https://gerrit.opnfv.org/gerrit/opnfvdocs

Change directory to opnfvdocs & install requirements.

cd opnfvdocs
sudo pip install -r etc/requirements.txt

Move the conf.py file to your project folder where RST files have been kept:

mv opnfvdocs/docs/conf.py <path-to-your-folder>/

Move the static files to your project folder:

mv opnfvdocs/_static/ <path-to-your-folder>/

Build the documentation from within your project folder:

sphinx-build -b html <path-to-your-folder> <path-to-output-folder>

Your documentation shall be built as HTML inside the specified output folder directory.

Note

Be sure to remove the conf.py, the static/ files and the output folder from the <project>/docs/. This is for testing only. Only commit the rst files and related content.