# Contribution guidelines

> How to contribute to Docsy

---

Docsy is an open source project and we love getting patches and contributions to
make Docsy and its docs even better.

> [!CAUTION] A note for **students** and **prospective mentees**
>
> We welcome your contributions but note that:
>
> - We cannot guarantee _when_ your [pull requests][pr] (PRs) will be reviewed.
> - Review does not guarantee acceptance or merging.
> - We may reject PRs with content (e.g., AI-generated) that does not meet our
>   quality standards.

> [!NB] Maintainers, see [Maintainer notes](/project/about/contributing/).

## Contributing to Docsy

### Contributor License Agreement

Contributions to this project must be accompanied by a Contributor License
Agreement. You (or your employer) retain the copyright to your contribution;
this simply gives us permission to use and redistribute your contributions as
part of the project. Head over to <https://cla.developers.google.com/> to see
your current agreements on file or to sign a new one.

You generally only need to submit a CLA once, so if you've already submitted one
(even if it was for a different project), you probably don't need to do it
again.

### Code reviews

All submissions, including submissions by project members, require review. We
use GitHub pull requests for this purpose. Consult
[GitHub Help](https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-requests/) for more
information on using pull requests.

### Previewing your changes

As Docsy is a theme rather than a site, you can't serve the theme directly to
check your changes work. Instead use your updated local theme in a local copy of
the Docsy example site (copy or make your changes in the `themes/docsy`
directory) and [preview](/docs/deployment/) from there. Alternatively, clone the
[Docsy theme repo](https://github.com/google/docsy) and test your changes in a
local copy of this site, as described [below](#previewing-your-changes-locally).

### Community guidelines

This project follows
[Google's Open Source Community Guidelines](https://opensource.google.com/conduct/).

### Creating issues

Alternatively, if there's something you'd like to see in Docsy (or if you've
found something that isn't working the way you'd expect), but you're not sure
how to fix it yourself, please create an
[issue](https://github.com/google/docsy/issues).

## Contributing to these docs

This user guide is, like our example site, a Docsy site that uses the Hugo
static site generator. We welcome updates to the docs!

We use [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/) to manage the deployment of the site
and provide previews of doc updates. The instructions here assume you're
familiar with basic GitHub workflows.

### Quick start with Netlify

1. Fork the [Docsy repo](https://github.com/google/docsy) on GitHub: this site's
   files live in the `docsy.dev` subdirectory.
1. Make your changes and send a [pull request][pr] (PR).
1. If you're not yet ready for a review, add "WIP" to the PR name to indicate
   it's a work in progress. (**Don't** add the Hugo property "draft = true" to
   the page front matter, because that prevents the auto-deployment of the
   content preview described in the next point.)
1. Wait for the automated PR workflow to do some checks. When it's ready, you
   should see a comment like this: **deploy/netlify — Deploy preview ready!**
1. Click **Details** to the right of "Deploy preview ready" to see a preview of
   your updates.
1. Continue updating your doc and pushing your changes until you're happy with
   the content.
1. When you're ready for a review, add a comment to the PR, and remove any "WIP"
   markers.

### Updating a single page

If you've just spotted something you'd like to change while using the docs,
Docsy has a shortcut for you:

1. Click **Edit this page** in the top right hand corner of the page.
1. If you don't already have an up to date fork of the project repo, you are
   prompted to get one - click **Fork this repository and propose changes** or
   **Update your Fork** to get an up to date version of the project to edit. The
   appropriate page in your fork is displayed in edit mode.
1. Follow the rest of the [Quick start with Netlify](#quick-start-with-netlify)
   process above to make and preview your changes.

### Previewing your changes locally

If you want to run your own local Hugo server to preview your changes as you
work:

1. Follow the instructions in [Getting started](get-started) to install Hugo and
   any other tools you need.
1. Fork the [Docsy](https://github.com/google/docsy) repo into your own project,
   then create a local copy using `git clone`:

   ```sh
   git clone https://github.com/google/docsy.git
   ```

1. Change to the `docsy.dev` directory and run the following Hugo command to
   build the site and start the Hugo server. Note that you need the `themesDir`
   flag because the site files are inside the theme repo.

   ```sh
   cd docsy.dev
   hugo server --themesDir ../..
   ```

   By default your site will be available at <http://localhost:1313/>. Now that
   you're serving your site locally, Hugo will watch for changes to the content
   and automatically refresh your site.

1. Continue with the usual GitHub workflow to edit files, commit them, push the
   changes up to your fork, and create a pull request.

#### Preview your changes using a Docker container

Docsy comes with `Dockerfile` and `docker-compose` files to run the server
locally with Docker, without installing any additional dependencies.

- Using [Docker]:
  1.  Build the Docker container:

      ```bash
      docker build -t docsy/user-guide .
      ```

  1.  Run the container, mounting the repository as a shared volume:

      ```bash
      docker run -it --user=$(id -u):$(id -g) -p 1313:1313 \
        -v $(pwd):/app/docsy -v /app/docsy/docsy.dev/node_modules \
        docsy/user-guide
      ```

- Using [Docker Compose][docker-compose]:
  1.  Build the container:

      ```bash
      docker-compose build
      ```

  1.  Run the container:

      ```bash
      DOCSY_USER=$(id -u):$(id -g) docker-compose up
      ```

Open <http://localhost:1313> in your web browser to load the docsy user guide.
In most cases, docsy will automatically reload the site to reflect any changes
to the documentation or the code. Changes to some parts of the docsy code may
require manually reloading the page or re-starting the container.

Press **Ctrl + C** to stop the container.

[docker]: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/
[docker-compose]: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

### User guide formatting

We use [Prettier](https://prettier.io) to format the markdown source of the User
Guide. To check the formatting of your documentation changes, use the following
command:

```bash
npm run check:format
```

To automatically fix formatting issues, run `npm run fix:format`.

Prettier doesn't currently understand Hugo template language directives, so you
might need to bracket such directives using the following ignore directives:

```go-html-template
<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->
{{< tabpane >}}
...
{{< /tabpane >}}
<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->
```

You can use these ignore directives to surround any markdown that you'd like
Prettier to ignore. If the region is a contiguous block of text, then you can
omit the end directive and replace the start directive with
`prettier-ignore-start`.

### Creating an issue

If there's something you'd like to see in the docs, but you're not sure how to
fix it yourself, please create an issue in
[this repository](https://github.com/google/docsy). You can also create an issue
about a specific page by clicking the **Create Issue** button in the top right
hand corner of the page.

[PR]:
  https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/creating-a-pull-request