Nextcloud Documentation

Documentation is published on https://docs.nextcloud.com. To edit it yourself, you need to tinker a bit with Git and Sphinx. See the Style Guide for formatting and style conventions.

Manuals

This repository hosts three manuals:

• Users' Manual
• Administration Manual
• Developers Manual

Please work in the appropriate branch: stable-branches are for the respective release (e.g. 14.0 or 15.0), master is the latest version.

Please wrap lines at 80 characters.

Note

configuration_server/config_sample_php_parameters.rst is auto-generated from the core config.sample.php file; changes to this file must be made in core https://github.com/nextcloud/server/tree/master/config

Spelling and Capitalization Conventions

As this grows it may be moved to its own page.

• Nextcloud App Store
• synchronize
• Web (Web page, Web site)

License

All documentation in this repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0).

Style

Source files are written using the Sphinx Documentation Generator. The syntax follows the reStructuredText style, and can also be edited from GitHub.

Structure

Of course, think about structure. Keep in mind that we try NOT to move or rename pages once they are created! Lots of external sources link to our documentation, including the indexing by search engines of course. So once you create a page with a certain name, it has to stay in that location and with that name. Think of it as API stability - we have to ensure things stay as they are as much as possible. Renaming or moving is only allowed in exceptional circumstances and only when a redirect is put in place.

Editing

Contributing to the documentation requires a GitHub account. Make sure you are working in the correct branch for your version of Nextcloud or client apps. If your edits pertain to multiple manual versions, be prepared to backport as needed.

To edit a document, you can edit the .rst files on your local system, or work directly on GitHub. The latter is only suitable for small fixes and improvements because substantial editing efforts can better be controlled on your local PC.

The best way is to install a complete Sphinx build environment and work on your local PC. You will be able to make your own local builds, which is the fastest and best way to preview for errors. Sphinx will report syntax errors, missing images, and formatting errors. The GitHub preview is not complete and misses many mistakes. Create a new branch against the master or stable branch you are editing, make your edits, then push your new branch to GitHub and open a new PR.

To edit on GitHub, fork the repository (see top-right of the screen, under your username). You will then be able to make changes easily. Once done, you can create a pull request and get the changes reviewed and back into the official repository.

When editing either on your own local PC or on GitHub, be sure to sign of commits, to certify adherence to the Developer Certificate of Origin, see https://github.com/probot/dco . Your commit messages need to have, the name and email address of the contributor.

Signed-off-by: Awesome Contributor <[email protected]>

If using the command line and your name and email are configured, you can use

git commit -s -m 'Commit message'

In both settings be sure that your email address matches that in your GitHub profile, which if you have privacy enabled will be [email protected]

Translations

Help translate the documentation.

For developers that want to ease the translation process, please read this documentation.

Building

Building HTML

1. Install pipenv - https://pipenv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
2. Create a Python environment (typically inside this repository): pipenv --python 3.9
3. Change into the environment: pipenv shell
4. Install the dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Now you can use make ... to build all the stuff - for example make html to build the HTML flavor of all manuals

To change into this environment you need to run pipenv shell to launch the shell and to exit you can use either exit or Ctrl + D.

When editing the documentation installing sphinx-autobuild though pip can be helpful. This will watch file changes and automatically reload the html preview:

1. Install pip install sphinx-autobuild
2. Enter the documentation section cd user_manual
3. Watch for file changes make SPHINXBUILD=sphinx-autobuild html
4. Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 in the browser and start editing

Building PDF

1. Follow instructions for "Building HTML" above
2. Install latexmk and texlive-latex-extra - https://pipenv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
3. Create a Python environment (typically inside this repository): pipenv --python 3.9
4. Change into the environment: pipenv shell
5. Install the dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt
6. Now you can use make ... to build all the stuff - for example make pdf to build the PDF flavor of all manuals

Using the VSCode DevContainer

This repository contains a full-featured VSCode DevContainer. You can use it in your local development environment or via GitHub Codespaces. Just open the container an use one of the commands from above to build the project. For example make to build the full documentaion, make html to build the HTML documentaion or make pdf to build the PDF documentation. You can also use make SPHINXBUILD=sphinx-autobuild html in combination with port forwarding to watch file changes and automatically reload the html preview.

Icons

To compile and update the icons list in the designer manual, you will also need

1. inkscape
2. sass
3. unzip
4. wget