erino / gds-way

How we build and operate products at GDS

Technical Documentation

Getting started

To preview or build the website, we need to use the terminal.

Install Ruby with Rubygems, preferably with a Ruby version manager, and the Bundler gem.

In the application folder type the following to install the required gems:

bundle install

Making documentation changes

To make changes edit the source files in the source folder.

Although a single page of HTML is generated the markdown is spread across multiple files to make it easier to manage. They can be found in source/documentation.

A new markdown file isn't automatically included in the generated output. If we add a new markdown file at the location source/documentation/agile/scrum.md, the following snippet in source/index.html.md.erb, includes it in the generated output.

<%= partial 'documentation/agile/scrum' %>

Including files manually like this lets us specify the position they appear in the page.

Making functional changes

The GDS Way is built from the Tech Docs Template repository. Any functional changes and bug fixes should be made to that project first, then follow the instructions here to update the GDS Way.

Preview

Whilst writing documentation we can run a middleman server to preview how the published version will look in the browser. After saving a change the preview in the browser will automatically refresh.

The preview is only available on our own computer. Others won't be able to access it if they are given the link.

Type the following to start the server:

bundle exec middleman server

If all goes well something like the following output will be displayed:

== The Middleman is loading
== LiveReload accepting connections from ws://192.168.0.8:35729
== View your site at "http://Laptop.local:4567", "http://192.168.0.8:4567"
== Inspect your site configuration at "http://Laptop.local:4567/__middleman", "http://192.168.0.8:4567/__middleman"

You should now be able to view a live preview at http://localhost:4567.

Build

If you want to publish the website without using a build script you may need to build the static HTML files.

Type the following to build the HTML:

bundle exec middleman build

This will create a build subfolder in the application folder which contains the HTML and asset files ready to be published.