Docs Project workflow

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Docs Projects

The mission of the Fedora Documentation Project is to provide documentation to users and developers to improve the overall usage of Fedora. We do that by explaining the usage of certain pieces of software or systems, provide written accounts of special events (releases, etc), and provide recommendations on setting of software or systems (security, performance, etc).

While in draft stage, documents are produced on the wiki. There material from various subject matter experts is collected. If the author prefers, a document may be written offline. No matter how the document is drafted, it will always be converted into XML.

Release notes, guides, and formal documents on a specific piece of software are published in DocBook XML. Published XML documents are converted into html, pdf, and other formats using Publican.

Once in the XML format, the document is checked into a git branch where it may be further edited.

Finished product is available at docs.fp.o and sometimes packaged for the Fedora repositories.

Announcements

The Docs Project often works with marketing to produce announcements. This work tends to be done almost entirely within the wiki, and rarely, if ever is a formal document produced. Occasionally, the Fedora Design Team will take the wiki document and use it as the basis for a glossy document or brochure. A similar process, obviously without the engagement of Marketing, is used when documenting Docs Project procedures or policies.

Release Notes

Release notes, on the other hand, almost always follow the complete process. The only unfrequented path is directly writing to DocBook; Release Notes are always developed in the wiki first.

Guides

Guides are typically not developed in the wiki but rather written straight to DocBook. In addition, Guides are typically not packaged. The emphasis here is on typical, Guides are sometimes packaged and there is no reason input cannot be collected on the wiki.

Access Control

Each of the various repositories has access controlled by some FAS group. Access to the wiki is encouraged, rather than controlled, so access to the wiki is available to anyone who has signed the contributor agreement.

Contributors who have learned to write XML and become familiar with git are entered into the Docs writers group, allowing access to the git repositories. Each document is maintained in a git repository, and the writer group grants access to all of these.

When a contributor has developed the skills necessary to prepare documents for docs.fp.o he is given entry to the publisher's group, which permits committing changes to the Fedora documentation website. If a contributor needs to package a document, the packaged document is submitted for review, and once successfully reviewed, the contributor gets packager privilege, and may push that package to the Fedora repositories.

Note: Source

The sources for the above images are text:

• Docs_Workflow_TLflowLR.dot
• Docs_Workflow_flo-announceLR.dot
• Docs_Workflow_flo-relnotesLR.dot
• Docs_Workflow_flo-guideLR.dot
• Docs_Workflow_docs-permissionsLR.dot

If you wish to edit the above images, install the graphiz package and save the text on one of the above pages to a text file. Then execute the command:

  dot -Tpng -o TLflow2.png TLflow2.dot

(or whichever file you select). Edit the source and repeat until the image is how you desire. Note that the various flow- files are copies of TLflow2 with various sections grayed and the size reduced. Then update the source wiki page for those following you, and upload the png to the wiki. Refresh this page and be sure it appears in context correctly.

Old Material still to be incorporated

Out of date
Much of the material below is badly out of date or in need of considerable editing. It has been commented out for now.