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Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:32:01 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Sylvain Lebresne (JIRA)" <jira@apache.org>
To: commits@cassandra.apache.org
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Subject: [jira] [Commented] (CASSANDRA-8700) replace the wiki with docs in
 the git repo
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archived-at: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:32:03 -0000


    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8700?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15329585#comment-15329585 ] 

Sylvain Lebresne commented on CASSANDRA-8700:
---------------------------------------------

So, progress update: I've pushed a WIP branch [here|https://github.com/pcmanus/cassandra/commits/doc_in_tree] with a first version of the doc. It contains the outline from the google doc document Jonathan mentioned above with the few sections attached here (by [~Stefania], [~jjirsa] and [~rspitzer]) filled. I've also put the CQL doc but the conversion from textile didn't went too well so it's pretty broken right now and I'm going to work on fixing that next.

As said above, it uses sphinx (and the sphinx_rtd_theme; if you have neither, it's a {{pip install sphinx sphinx_rtd_theme}} away) and I've added a {{gen-doc}} ant target to build the html (but it actually just delegates to the {{Makefile}} that sphinx provides, which can be used to build other formats like pdf, epub, ...). There is a new {{README.md}} file in {{doc/}} that explains all that.

Currently, the static html is put in a {{doc/build/}} directory, and once we're ready to put that online, we'll probably have to copy that manually since the website is not in git. On that topic, would be nice to see if we can get that to change, moving the site in git so we can automate publishing a bit more easily.

Another point worth mentioning is that the branch is against trunk and that I used the CQL doc from there. So if we want to commit to earlier branch, we'll theoretically have to change the CQL doc used (and as said above, it's a bit painful to migrate). Alternatively, we could commit in trunk only and say that for earlier versions, user should check the CQL doc changelog to figure out if a given CQL feature is available in their version.

Anyway, I guess the most important thing missing is content: most of it is currently TODO. So let's try to continue focusing on filling the blanks. You are, btw, welcome to create pull-request against my branch above for that (but I'm also still fine with just attaching particular chapters here as as been done so far).

And for those that are curious how it currently looks like and can't be bothered to compile it locally, I've pushed the current version temporarily [here|http://www.lebresne.net/~mcmanus/cassandra-doc-test/html/index.html] (again, the CQL part is broken, working on it).


> replace the wiki with docs in the git repo
> ------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CASSANDRA-8700
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8700
>             Project: Cassandra
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Documentation and Website
>            Reporter: Jon Haddad
>            Assignee: Sylvain Lebresne
>            Priority: Minor
>         Attachments: TombstonesAndGcGrace.md, bloom_filters.md, compression.md, contributing.zip, getting_started.zip, hardware.md
>
>
> The wiki as it stands is pretty terrible.  It takes several minutes to apply a single update, and as a result, it's almost never updated.  The information there has very little context as to what version it applies to.  Most people I've talked to that try to use the information they find there find it is more confusing than helpful.
> I'd like to propose that instead of using the wiki, the doc directory in the cassandra repo be used for docs (already used for CQL3 spec) in a format that can be built to a variety of output formats like HTML / epub / etc.  I won't start the bikeshedding on which markup format is preferable - but there are several options that can work perfectly fine.  I've personally use sphinx w/ restructured text, and markdown.  Both can build easily and as an added bonus be pushed to readthedocs (or something similar) automatically.  For an example, see cqlengine's documentation, which I think is already significantly better than the wiki: http://cqlengine.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
> In addition to being overall easier to maintain, putting the documentation in the git repo adds context, since it evolves with the versions of Cassandra.
> If the wiki were kept even remotely up to date, I wouldn't bother with this, but not having at least some basic documentation in the repo, or anywhere associated with the project, is frustrating.
> For reference, the last 3 updates were:
> 1/15/15 - updating committers list
> 1/08/15 - updating contributers and how to contribute
> 12/16/14 - added a link to CQL docs from wiki frontpage (by me)


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