Writing environment-specific documentation#
There are multiple science platforms deployed in different locations for different purposes. Each science platform instance is a separate Phalanx environment. A separate version of this documentation is built for each science platform environment and deployed using LSST the Docs’s editions feature. The documentation corresponding to the primary, public-facing science platform is always deployed as the main edition at the root URL (https://rsp.lsst.io). Other editions are available from https://rsp.lsst.io/v and the Science Platform homepages of each environment also link directly to these editions.
This page describes supported approaches for writing documentation that is different for each environment. Each section covers an approach that handles different levels of content customization:
Using reStructuredText substitutions to customize words and sentences
Using Jinja templating to customize paragraphs
Using Jinja templating with source file includes (*.in.rst) to customize large portions of a page
Besides this documentation, you can also learn from the existing documentation.
The homepage (docs/index.rst) and log-in (docs/guides/getting-started/get-an-account.rst) pages demonstrate all the techniques described here.
Information about the RSP environments is maintained in a file named .phalanxenvs.json in the documentation repository.
In the future, this information will be automatically scraped from primary sources, like the Phalanx repository.
Using reStructuredText substitutions#
For inline content (words or sentences) that changes from one environment to another, such as the name of the science platform environment or a link to the science platform, use reStructuredText substitutions.
You can find these substitutions defined in rst_epilog.rst.jinja.
Some of the key substitutions include:
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The rst_epilog.rst.jinja file is templated using Jinja.
Using Jinja templating#
If different environments require alternative versions of whole paragraphs, use the jinja directive, available through sphinx-jinja, to display different content based on Jinja control-flow syntax:
.. jinja:: rsp
{% if env.primary %}
This paragraph appears in the documentation for the
primary science platform environment.
{% elif env.name in ("base", "summit") %}
This paragraph appears in documentation for the base
and summit.
{% elif env.name == "idfprod" %}
This paragraph appears only for the "IDF prod" environment.
{% endif %}
The argument to the jinja directive is always rsp.
The env variable contains information about that environment.
When using the jinja directive, as with any Sphinx directive, ensure that content is indented consistently with respect to the scope of the directive, as shown above.
Using Jinja templating with source file includes (*.in.rst)#
The previous approach works well for templating paragraphs, however it is inconvenient to write inside a Jinja directive (within the scope of Jinja syntax, at that). To customize large portions of text, you can use the include statement in combination with Jinja:
.. jinja:: rsp
{% if primary %}
.. include:: the-page.primary.in.rst
{% else %}
.. include:: the-page.notprimary.in.rst
{% endif %}
This code sample inserts content from the included source files, either the-page.primary.in.rst or the-page.notprimary.in.rst.
Those included files are in the familiar reStructuredText syntax (you shouldn’t need to use further Jinja syntax within them, though can certainly use substititions).
The included files must have a .in.rst suffix so that the Sphinx build won’t incorporate those files as separate pages.
Our further convention is to prefix the name with the root name of the page, followed by a description of the environment or context where the content applies.
Avoiding the “only” directive#
Besides the techniques described above, Sphinx also provides an only directive to control content based on Sphinx build tags. As part of the tox-based build, the environment name is available as a tag:
.. only:: idfprod
This sentence appears only for the ``idfprod`` build of the docs.
You should avoid this approach, however, and use one of the earlier techniques instead, because the only directive does not work well with reStructuredText labels and the built-in Sphinx search.