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Re: V6 documentation

 

That just doesn't seem that useful to me.  The fact that Fedora forces this
process means that Fedora offline docs will always be outdated.

If there is no way to work around it for Fedora, I suggest we develop an
out-of-band way of delivering offline docs to people (not using the Fedora
packaging system).


On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 11:52 AM Steven A. Falco <stevenfalco@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Right now, the downstream (official) Fedora builds depend on a single tag
> for all the components - source code, libraries, and docs.
>
> I could substitute a SHA for the docs, but I'd have to hard-code the SHA
> in the "spec file" that controls the build, the same way the tag is
> hard-coded in the spec file.
>
> Since all the components are built at the same time from the same script,
> it would not be possible to "update every time something is pushed to the
> V6 branch".  I.e., Fedora builds are not a "rolling release" - they are
> tied to tags.
>
>         Steve
>
> On 1/19/22 11:38 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
> > Carsten,
> >
> > There is no reason to remove the ability to package docs offline, I just
> don't think it should be a focus of the project.
> > The majority of users will be served better by keeping a "rolling
> release" online at docs.kicad.org <http://docs.kicad.org> (with a
> download button, ideally).
> >
> >  > It absolutely doesn't hurt to build completely offline usable
> documentation.
> >
> > It does hurt the way we do it today, for the following reasons:
> >
> > 1) We currently support multiple formats, which makes the build system
> and formatting changes complicated
> >
> > 2) We currently tie the documentation version together with the
> application version, and don't have good workflows for "rolling release" of
> documentation for Linux distros that use separate packages.
> >
> > 3) The application itself doesn't handle the situation where offline
> docs are missing very gracefully, or note to users that when offline docs
> are present that they are probably outdated.
> >
> > What I would propose to improve the situation is:
> >
> > 1) Drop all formats except HTML.  HTML is perfectly fine as an offline
> format, and this allows us to make improvements to the build workflow and
> the layout/style of the docs without worrying about doing so in a way that
> also works for PDF.  If you really want a PDF, you can render it from HTML
> pages anyway.
> >
> > 2) Change the application to gracefully redirect to the online docs if
> offline docs are missing
> >
> > 3) Make a better "offline docs" build that adds the warning about docs
> being out-of-date.  Have packagers use this if they want to generate docs
> packages, and maybe make it easy for anyone to download these from the
> website.
> >
> > 4) Stop tagging the kicad-docs repo with every KiCad code release.
> Instead, continue the new practice we have started of maintaining major
> release branches for the docs (V5, V6, etc) and have packagers start
> packaging the tip of these branches.  I.e. the Ubuntu package for
> kicad-docs will update every time something is pushed to the V6 branch as
> long as V6 is the stable release, and so on.
> >
> > -Jon
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 11:29 AM Carsten Schoenert <
> c.schoenert@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:c.schoenert@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hello,
> >
> >     Am 19.01.22 um 17:21 schrieb Gabriel Staples,
> ElectricRCAircraftGuy.com:
> >     ...
> >      > In other words, please do make "online documentation" only, as it
> allows
> >      > faster updates to it and better consistency,
> >
> >     please don't!
> >     It absolutely doesn't hurt to build completely offline usable
> >     documentation. It works for years without special requirements.
> >
> >     I work often in environments where I have absolutely no access to the
> >     internet, but can use packaged software, so I heavily need offline
> >     documentation to do some sort of productive work.
> >
> >     --
> >     Regards
> >     Carsten
> >
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