XML Apache Xindice
 
   

Documentation: How to contribute

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by Vladimir R. Bossicard

General rules

Writing the documentation is a team effort so let's first set some basic rules to prevent a mess:

  • Four spaces, no tabs! Period.
  • If you write a complete document or participate substancially to one, please add your name to the <header><authors> list.
  • If you only contribute partially to the document (correcting errors), please add your name to the Author: list.
Note
If you know an Open Source XML beautifier that can be used in our build process, please drop me a line!

Using Forrest

The Xindice website and documentation are generated using the Forrest tool. If you are new to Forrest, please read the Using Forrest guide to get you started. After several tries, I recommand the following settings:

  • Generate the documentation as a webapp by invoking forrest webapp from the xml-xindice repository.
  • Forrest copies the src/documentation/content/xdocs files into the build/webapp/content/xdocs directory. If you want to only work with the src directory, you will need to create links. The directories/files that need to be linked (and deleted from the webapp) are:
    • skinconf.xml
    • status.xml
    • content/xdocs
    • resources/images
  • Rename the build/webapp into another name: this will prevent you from deleting the documentation with a call to ant clean...
  • Add the following context to the ${TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/server.xml configuration file:
    <Context path="/Xindice-documentation"
             docBase="${path-to-the-webapp-documentation}/webapp"
             reloadable="true"/>

After restarting Tomcat, you can browse the documentation on localhost:8080/Xindice-documentation and edit the source from the src/documentation folder.

Have fun!