Publishing a document with Publican

The forthcoming Publican 2.0 includes features to automate publishing documents to websites. As of May 2010, Publican 2.0 is still under development, but RPMs for a beta version, Publican 1.99, are available.

Preparation

1. Create a local copy of the git repository of the docs.fedoraproject.org website:

   git clone ssh://USERNAME@git.fedorahosted.org/git/docs/web.git

   Where USERNAME is your FAS username.

   

   Large download
   This download will take some time, even on fast connections.
2. Change into the directory into which you downloaded the web.git repo, and make a copy of homepage.tmp named homepage.cfg:

   cp homepage.tmp homepage.cfg

3. Edit the homepage.cfg file to provide the absolute paths to the fedoradocs.db file and the public_html directory. For example, if you downloaded the web.git repo to the fedoradocs subdirectory of your home directory, your homepage.cfg file might look like:

   # Config::Simple 4.59
   # Tue May 11 13:53:03 2010
   
   db_file: /home/jsmith/fedoradocs/web/fedoradocs.db
   toc_path: /home/jsmith/fedoradocs/web/public_html

4. Download the publican-1.99 package from http://rlandmann.fedorapeople.org/publican and save it to your system.
5. Install the publican-1.99 package. In the directory where you saved the package in step 4, become root and run:

   yum localinstall publican-1.99*  --nogpgcheck

Publishing a document

Publican now controls the directory structure and the SQLite database that manages the site and its tables of contents. Do not add or remove directories from the directory tree manually as we did in the past.

If you are publishing draft documentation, be sure to follow the instructions described at Publishing draft documentation first.

1. Update your copy of the docs.fedoraproject.org website. In the directory where you keep your local copy of the site, run:

   git pull

2. Change to the directory where you keep a checked-out copy of the document that you want to publish, then run:

   publican build --embedtoc --publish --formats epub,html,html-single,pdf --langs LANGUAGE_CODES

   where LANGUAGE_CODES is a comma-separated list of the languages in which you want to publish this document.
3. Browse to the publish subdirectory and to the documents themselves inside it to ensure that the documents have built as you expected. In particular, verify:
   • the product name is Fedora (note capitalization)
   • the version number is correct
   • the document title is properly capitalized and spaced: for example, Foo Guide, not foo-guide
4. Install the book to the Fedora website:

   publican install_book --site_config PATH_TO_SITE_CONFIG_FILE --lang LANGUAGE_CODE

   where PATH_TO_SITE_CONFIG_FILE is the path to the homepage.cfg file in your local copy of the docs.fedoraproject.org website, and LANGUAGE_CODE is the language in which you are publishing the document. Note that you can only run publican install_book for one language at a time.
5. Change to the directory in which you keep your local copy of the site and run:

   git add .
   git commit -m "DESCRIPTION_OF_YOUR_CHANGES"
   git push

Removing a document

To remove a document for a particular version of Fedora in a particular language:

1. Update your copy of the docs.fedoraproject.org website. In the directory where you keep your local copy of the site, run:

   git pull

2. Change to the directory where you keep a checked-out copy of the document that you want to remove, then run:

   publican remove_book --site_config PATH_TO_SITE_CONFIG_FILE --lang LANGUAGE_CODE

   where PATH_TO_SITE_CONFIG_FILE is the path to the homepage.cfg file in your local copy of the docs.fedoraproject.org website, and LANGUAGE_CODE is the language in which you are removing the document. Note that you can only run publican remove_book for one language at a time.
3. Change to the directory in which you keep your local copy of the site and run:

   git add .
   git commit -m "DESCRIPTION_OF_YOUR_CHANGES"
   git push

4. Publican can only remove the local files and directories on your system, not their record in Git. Run

   git status

   to look for entries marked as deleted locally but not in git. You must remove these files or directories with

   git rm space-separated_list_of_files_and_directories
   git commit -m"DESCRIPTION_OF_YOUR_CHANGES"
   git push

   

   A "git rm" command gone wrong can cause widespread damage to the documentation site. If you are not absolutely sure of what you are doing, ask for help.
   

Updating a document

To update a document previously published in a particular language for a particular version of Fedora, change into the directory in which you keep a checked-out copy of the document, then run publican install_book, as if you were installing it for the first time. Publican automatically replaces the old version with the new one.