We deeply value documentation contributions from the Docker community. We'd like to make it as easy as possible for you to work in this repository. The documentation for Docker is published at https://docs.docker.com/. The following sections guide you through the process of contributing to Docker documentation.
- Contribution guidelines
- Pull request guidelines
- Collaborate on a pull request
- Per-PR staging on GitHub
- Relative linking for GitHub viewing
- Testing changes and practical guidance
- Build and preview the docs locally
- Copyright and license
The live docs are published from the master branch. Therefore, you must create pull requests against the master branch for all content updates. This includes:
- Conceptual and task-based information
- Restructuring / rewriting
- Doc bug fixing
- Fixing typos, broken links, and any grammar errors
There are two ways to contribute a pull request to the docs repository:
-
You can click Edit this page option in the right column of every page on https://docs.docker.com/.
This opens the GitHub editor, which means you don't need to know a lot about Git, or even about Markdown. When you save, Git prompts you to create a fork if you don't already have one, and to create a branch in your fork and submit the pull request.
-
Fork the docs GitHub repository. Suggest changes or add new content on your local branch, and submit a pull request (PR) to the
masterbranch.This is the manual, more advanced version of clicking 'Edit this page' on a published docs page. Initiating a docs changes in a PR from your own branch gives you more flexibility, as you can submit changes to multiple pages or files under a single pull request, and even create new topics.
For a demo of the components, tags, Markdown syntax, styles, etc we use at https://docs.docker.com/, see test.md.
Here’s a list of some of the important files:
/_data/toc.yamldefines the left-hand navigation for the docs/js/docs.jsdefines most of the docs-specific JS such as the table of contents (ToC) generation and menu syncing/css/style.scssdefines the docs-specific style rules/_layouts/docs.htmlis the HTML template file, which defines the header and footer, and includes all the JS/CSS that serves the docs content
Some files and directories are maintained in the upstream repositories. You can find a list of such files in _config_production.yml. Pull requests against these files will be rejected.
The front-matter of a given page is in a section at the top of the Markdown file that starts and ends with three hyphens. It includes YAML content. The following keys are supported. The title, description, and keywords are required.
| Key | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| title | yes | The page title. This is added to the HTML output as a <h1> level header. |
| description | yes | A sentence that describes the page contents. This is added to the HTML metadata. |
| keywords | yes | A comma-separated list of keywords. These are added to the HTML metadata. |
| redirect_from | no | A YAML list of pages which should redirect to the current page. At build time, each page listed here is created as an HTML stub containing a 302 redirect to this page. |
| notoc | no | Either true or false. If true, no in-page TOC is generated for the HTML output of this page. Defaults to false. Appropriate for some landing pages that have no in-page headings. |
| toc_min | no | Ignored if notoc is set to true. The minimum heading level included in the in-page TOC. Defaults to 2, to show <h2> headings as the minimum. |
| toc_max | no | Ignored if notoc is set to false. The maximum heading level included in the in-page TOC. Defaults to 3, to show <h3> headings. Set to the same as toc_min to only show toc_min level of headings. |
| skip_read_time | no | Set to true to disable the 'Estimated reading time' banner for this page. |
| sitemap | no | Exclude the page from indexing by search engines. When set to false, the page is excluded from sitemap.xml, and a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/> header is added to the page. |
Here's an example of a valid (but contrived) page metadata. The order of the metadata elements in the front-matter isn't important.
---
description: Instructions for installing Docker Engine on Ubuntu
keywords: requirements, apt, installation, ubuntu, install, uninstall, upgrade, update
title: Install Docker Engine on Ubuntu
redirect_from:
- /ee/docker-ee/ubuntu/
- /engine/installation/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/
- /engine/installation/linux/docker-ee/ubuntu/
- /engine/installation/linux/ubuntu/
- /engine/installation/linux/ubuntulinux/
- /engine/installation/ubuntulinux/
- /install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/
- /install/linux/docker-ee/ubuntu/
- /install/linux/ubuntu/
- /installation/ubuntulinux/
toc_max: 4
---Help us review your PRs more quickly by following these guidelines.
- Try not to touch a large number of files in a single PR if possible.
- Don't change whitespace or line wrapping in parts of a file you are not editing for other reasons. Make sure your text editor is not configured to automatically reformat the whole file when saving.
- We highly recommend that you build the docs locally and verify your changes before submitting a PR. See the section Build and preview the docs locally.
- A Netlify test runs for each PR that is against the
masterbranch, and deploys the result of your PR to a staging site. The URL will be available at in the Conversation tab. Check the staging site to verify how your changes look and fix issues, if necessary. - Use relative linking to link to other topics. See Relative linking for GitHub viewing.
Unless the PR author specifically disables it, you can push commits into another contributor's PR. You can do it from the command line by adding and fetching their remote, checking out their branch, and adding commits to it. Even easier, you can add commits from the Github web UI, by clicking the pencil icon for a given file in the Files view.
If a PR consists of multiple small addendum commits on top of a more significant
one, the commit will usually be "squash-merged", so that only one commit is
merged into the master branch. In some scenarios where a squash and merge isn't appropriate, all commits are kept separate when merging.
A Netlify test runs for each PR created against the master branch and deploys the result of your PR to a staging site. When the site builds successfully, you will see a comment in the Conversation tab in the PR stating Deploy Preview for docsdocker ready!. Click the Browse the preview URL and check the staging site to verify how your changes look and fix issues, if necessary. Reviewers also check the staged site before merging the PR to protect the integrity of the docs site.
Feel free to link to ../foo.md so that the docs are readable in GitHub, but keep in mind that Jekyll templating notation
{% such as this %} renders in raw text and will not be processed. In general, it's best to assume the docs are being read
directly on https://docs.docker.com/.
If you want to test a style change, or if you want to see how to achieve a
particular outcome with Markdown, Bootstrap, JQuery, or something else, have
a look at test.md (which renders in the site at /test/).
The use of tabs, as on pages like https://docs.docker.com/engine/api/, requires the use of HTML. The tabs use Bootstrap CSS/JS, so refer to those docs for more advanced usage. For a basic horizontal tab set, copy/paste starting from this code and implement from there. Keep an eye on those href="#id" and id="id" references as you rename, add, and remove tabs.
<ul class="nav nav-tabs">
<li class="active"><a data-toggle="tab" data-target="#tab1">TAB 1 HEADER</a></li>
<li><a data-toggle="tab" data-target="#tab2">TAB 2 HEADER</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="tab-content">
<div id="tab1" class="tab-pane fade in active">TAB 1 CONTENT</div>
<div id="tab2" class="tab-pane fade">TAB 2 CONTENT</div>
</div>For more info and a few more permutations, see test.md.
If you need to run custom Javascript within a page, and it depends upon JQuery
or Bootstrap, make sure the <script> tags are at the very end of the page,
after all the content. Otherwise, the script may try to run before JQuery and
Bootstrap JS are loaded.
Don't forget to remove images that are no longer used. Keep the images sorted
in the local images/ directory, with names that naturally group related images
together in alphabetical order. For example, use settings-file-share.png
and settings-proxies.png instead of file-share-settings.png and
proxies-settings.png.
You may also use numbers, especially in the case of a
sequence, for example, run-only-the-images-you-trust-1.svg,
run-only-the-images-you-trust-2.png, run-only-the-images-you-trust-3.png.
When applicable, capture windows rather than the rectangular regions. This
eliminates unpleasant background and saves the editors the need to crop images.
On Mac, capture windows without shadows. To do this, when you press Command-Shift-4, press Option while clicking on the window. To disable shadows completely, run:
$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool TRUE
$ killall SystemUIServer # restart it.You can restore the shadows later using -bool FALSE.
To keep the Git repository light, please compress the images (losslessly). On Mac, you can use ImageOptim for instance. Be sure to compress the images before adding them to the repository. Compressing images after adding them to the repository actually worsens the impact on the Git repo (however, ut still optimizes the bandwidth during browsing).
Docker does not currently maintain a style guide. Follow the examples set by the existing documentation and use your best judgment.
We use markdownlint to ensure consistent markdown source, and to catch potential formatting issues as early as possible. While CI/CD will catch these during the PR review process, you may wish to configure your IDE to catch these while writing.
For VSCode, you can use the markdownlint
plugin, which will automatically detect and apply the pre-made rules in
.markdownlint.json. This plugin also comes with auto-fix functionality, see
the plugin documentation for more information.
On your local machine, clone the docs repository:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io.git
cd docker.github.ioThen, build and run the documentation using Docker Compose
docker compose up -d --buildYou need Docker Compose to build and run the docs locally. Docker Compose is included with Docker Desktop. If you don't have Docker Desktop installed, follow the instructions to install Docker Compose.
When the container is built and running, visit http://localhost:4000 in your web browser to view the docs.
To rebuild the docs after you made changes, run the docker compose up command
again. This rebuilds the docs, and updates the container with your changes:
docker compose up -d --buildTo stop the staging container, use the docker compose down command:
docker compose downThe default configuration for local builds of the documentation disables some features to allow for a shorter build-time. The following options differ between local builds, and builds that are deployed to docs.docker.com:
- search auto-completion, and generation of
js/metadata.json - Google Analytics
- page ratings
sitemap.xmlgeneration- minification of stylesheets (
css/style.css) - adjusting "edit this page" links for content in other repositories
If you want to contribute in these areas, you can perform a "production" build
locally. To preview the documentation with deployment features enabled, set the JEKYLL_ENV environment variable when building the documentation:
JEKYLL_ENV=production docker compose up --buildWhen the container is built and running, visit http://localhost:4000 in your web browser to view the docs.
To rebuild the docs after you make changes, repeat the steps above.
Copyright 2013-2022 Docker, inc, released under the Apache 2.0 license.