Open Stack

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 09:26:44AM +1200, Steve Baker wrote:
> On 23/05/14 08:56, Anne Gentle wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 6:42 PM, Steve Baker <sbaker at redhat.com
> > <mailto:sbaker at redhat.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     On 21/05/14 02:31, Doug Hellmann wrote:
> >>     On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Gauvain Pocentek
> >>     <gauvain.pocentek at objectif-libre.com> <mailto:gauvain.pocentek at objectif-libre.com> wrote:
> >>>     Le 2014-05-16 17:13, Anne Gentle a écrit :
> >>>
> >>>>     On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Gauvain Pocentek
> >>>>     <gauvain.pocentek at objectif-libre.com> <mailto:gauvain.pocentek at objectif-libre.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>     Hello,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     This mail probably mainly concerns the doc team, but I guess that the
> >>>>>     heat team wants to know what's going on.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     We've shortly discussed the state of heat documentation with Anne Gentle
> >>>>>     and Andreas Jaeger yesterday, and I'd like to share what we think would be
> >>>>>     nice to do.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     Currently we only have a small section in the user guide that describes
> >>>>>     how to start a stack, but nothing documenting how to write templates. The
> >>>>>     heat developer doc provides a good reference, but I think it's not easy to
> >>>>>     use to get started.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     So the idea is to add an "OpenStack Orchestration" chapter in the user
> >>>>>     guide that would document how to use a cloud with heat, and how to write
> >>>>>     templates.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     I've drafted a spec to keep track of this at [0].
> >>>>     I'd like to experiment a bit with converting the End User Guide to an
> >>>>     easier markup to enable more contributors to it. Perhaps bringing in
> >>>>     Orchestration is a good point to do this, plus it may help address the
> >>>>     auto-generation Steve mentions.
> >>>>
> >>>>     The loss would be the single sourcing of the End User Guide and Admin
> >>>>     User Guide as well as loss of PDF output and loss of translation. If
> >>>>     these losses are worthwhile for easier maintenance and to encourage
> >>>>     contributions from more cloud consumers, then I'd like to try an
> >>>>     experiment with it.
> >>>     Using RST would probably make it easier to import/include the developers'
> >>>     documentation. But I'm not sure we can afford to loose the features you
> >>>     mention. Translations for the user guides are very important I think.
> >>     Sphinx does appear to have translation support:
> >>     http://sphinx-doc.org/intl.html?highlight=translation
> >>
> >>     I've never used the feature myself, so I don't know how good the workflow is.
> >>
> >>     Sphinx will generate PDFs, though the LaTeX output is not as nice
> >>     looking as what we get now. There's also a direct-to-pdf builder that
> >>     uses rst2pdf that appears to support templates, so that might be an
> >>     easier path to producing something attractive:
> >>     http://ralsina.me/static/manual.pdf
> >     I attempted to make latexpdf on the heat sphinx docs and fell down
> >     a latex tool-chain hole.
> >
> >     I tried adding rst2pdf support to the sphinx docs build:
> >     https://review.openstack.org/#/c/94491/
> >
> >     and the results are a reasonable start:
> >     https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_b9ckHiNkjVS3ZNZmNXMkJkWE0/edit?usp=sharing
> >
> >
> >
> >>>     How would we review changes made in "external" repositories? The user guides
> >>>     are continuously published, this means that a change done in the heat/docs/
> >>>     dir would quite quickly land on the webserver without a doc team review. I
> >>>     completely trust the developers, but I'm not sure that this is the way to
> >>>     go.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>     The experiment would be to have a new repo set up,
> >>>>     openstack/user-guide and use the docs-core team as reviewers on it.
> >>>>     Convert the End User Guide from DocBook to RST and build with Sphinx.
> >>>>     Use the oslosphinx tempate for output. But what I don't know is if
> >>>>     it's possible to build the automated output outside of the
> >>>>     openstack/heat repo, does anyone have interest in doing a proof of
> >>>>     concept on this?
> >>>     I'm not sure that this is possible, but I'm no RST expert.
> >>     I'm not sure this quite answers the question, but the RST directives
> >>     for auto-generating docs from code usually depend on being able to
> >>     import the code. That means heat and its dependencies would need to be
> >>     installed on the system where the build is performed. We accomplish
> >>     this in the dev doc builds by using tox, which automatically handles
> >>     the installation as part of setting up the virtualenv where the build
> >>     command runs.
> >     I'm sure we could do a git checkout of heat during the docs build,
> >     and even integrate that with gating. I thought this was already
> >     happening for some docbook builds, but I can't find any examples now.
> >
> >>>>     I'd also like input on the loss of features I'm describing above. Is
> >>>>     this worth experimenting with?
> >>>     Starting this new book sounds like a lot of work. Right now I'm not
> >>>     convinced it's worth it.
> >>>
> >>>
> >     How about this for a suggestion. The Heat template authoring guide
> >     is potentially so large and different that it deserves to be in
> >     its own document. It is aimed at users, but there is so much
> >     potential content hidden in the template format that it wouldn't
> >     necessarily belong in the current user guide.
> >
> >
> > Sorry, every doc team member I've talked to doesn't want to take on
> > another guide. 
> >
> > Also the loss of nice PDF and having to test and maintain a second
> > translation tool chain isn't enthusiastically embraced from what I'm
> > hearing.
> >  
> >
> >
> >     We could start a new doc repo which is a sphinx-based template
> >     authoring guide. It will have a bunch of manually written content
> >     plus resource reference built from a heat git checkout. 
> >
> >
> > Since we already have a template authoring guide living with the heat
> > repo so this doesn't sound that much different from today.  
> >
> >     If this all works out then we can consider adding the user guide
> >     content to the heat template authoring guide, resulting in a new
> >     merged sphinx-based user guide.
> >
> >
> > Is the benefit a chance to experiment further? That might be useful,
> > but let's talk about what we'd use to measure success of this guide.
> > Page views? User input through bugs logged? Other ideas?
> >
> >
> The only significant success criteria I can think of is an increase in
> contributions from xml-phobic developers. But for all that, RST is quite
> complicated for a "simple" markup.

+1000 - IMO that is by far the most important success criteria.

I'll hold my hand up as one developer who tried to contribute but ran away
screaming due to all the XML-java-ness of the current process.

I don't think markup complexity is a major barrier to contribution. Needing
to use a closed source editor and download unfathomably huge amounts of
java to build locally definitely are though IMO/IME.

Steve