Consolidating/normalizing the PHP documentation build instructions

Hi,

This has come up in a couple of GitHub issues lately, such as this comment:

https://github.com/php/doc-en/issues/3240#issuecomment-2391486860

The documentation and tools for building the PHP documentation are a little scattered at the moment, and I think it would be good to pull them together into one place. The instructions are scattered between doc-en/README.md, doc-base/README.md, docs-base/CONTRIBUTING_DOCS.md and on http://doc.php.net. Not all of the translations have a README.md, and just from looking at those that do, they may not necessarily reflect a standard/current practice for building the docs.

What I’d like to do is pull everything together in the doc-base repository in a docs directory, and we can update doc.php.net to use those files instead of what currently lives in the tutorial directory in web-docs. Each language repository will then get a README.md pointing to those instructions (and language-specific notes can be added as necessary).

This puts the documentation about building the documentation into repos that the docs team has responsibility for, and leaves the web side of it to a repo under the web team’s responsibility.

Any objections or other thoughts on cleaning this up?

Jim

On Thu, Oct 3, 2024, at 11:36 AM, Jim Winstead wrote:

Hi,

This has come up in a couple of GitHub issues lately, such as this comment:

PHP 2024 Documentation Roadmap · Issue #3240 · php/doc-en · GitHub

The documentation and tools for building the PHP documentation are a little scattered at the moment, and I think it would be good to pull them together into one place. The instructions are scattered between `doc-en/README.md`, `doc-base/README.md`, `docs-base/CONTRIBUTING_DOCS.md` and on http://doc.php.net. Not all of the translations have a `README.md`, and just from looking at those that do, they may not necessarily reflect a standard/current practice for building the docs.

What I'd like to do is pull everything together in the `doc-base` repository in a `docs` directory, and we can update doc.php.net to use those files instead of what currently lives in the tutorial directory in `web-docs`. Each language repository will then get a README.md pointing to those instructions (and language-specific notes can be added as necessary).

This puts the documentation about building the documentation into repos that the docs team has responsibility for, and leaves the web side of it to a repo under the web team's responsibility.

Any objections or other thoughts on cleaning this up?

Here's a first draft of what pulling all of the docs into the `doc-base` repo could look like:

Draft PR: Consolidate documentation about documentation into docs directory by jimwins · Pull Request #159 · php/doc-base · GitHub

Jim

On 03.10.2024 at 20:36, Jim Winstead wrote:

This has come up in a couple of GitHub issues lately, such as this comment:

PHP 2024 Documentation Roadmap · Issue #3240 · php/doc-en · GitHub

The documentation and tools for building the PHP documentation are a little scattered at the moment, and I think it would be good to pull them together into one place. The instructions are scattered between `doc-en/README.md`, `doc-base/README.md`, `docs-base/CONTRIBUTING_DOCS.md` and on http://doc.php.net. Not all of the translations have a `README.md`, and just from looking at those that do, they may not necessarily reflect a standard/current practice for building the docs.

What I'd like to do is pull everything together in the `doc-base` repository in a `docs` directory, and we can update doc.php.net to use those files instead of what currently lives in the tutorial directory in `web-docs`. Each language repository will then get a README.md pointing to those instructions (and language-specific notes can be added as necessary).

This puts the documentation about building the documentation into repos that the docs team has responsibility for, and leaves the web side of it to a repo under the web team's responsibility.

Any objections or other thoughts on cleaning this up?

No objections from me; on the contrary, I welcome this change (partly
because doc.php.net still hasn't switched to HTTPS).

Christoph