https://github.com/apptainer/singularity-userdocs
User Documentation
https://github.com/apptainer/singularity-userdocs
Last synced: 18 days ago
JSON representation
User Documentation
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/apptainer/singularity-userdocs
- Owner: apptainer
- License: bsd-3-clause
- Created: 2018-06-01T19:24:09.000Z (almost 7 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2022-03-03T16:44:37.000Z (about 3 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-19T14:57:38.166Z (about 1 month ago)
- Language: Python
- Size: 175 MB
- Stars: 21
- Watchers: 7
- Forks: 56
- Open Issues: 19
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Contributing: contributing.rst
- License: LICENSE
- Security: security.rst
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# Singularity User Docs
IMPORTANT NOTE: Singularity has been renamed to
[Apptainer](https://apptainer.org/news/community-announcement-20211130).
This repository is now only for archiving the history.
Submit all current issues and pull requests to
[https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer](https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer).
## Setting up an environment to contribute
The Singularity user documentation is written in [reStructured Text (RST)
format](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html) and generated using
[Sphinx](https://pypi.org/project/Sphinx/). The
[ReadTheDocs](https://readthedocs.org/) theme for Sphinx is used.
We use RST instead of markdown as it's better at handling large documents with
many linked sections, and Sphinx makes it easy to produce online documentation
as well as PDFs.
Sphinx is written in Python. To get setup to contribute:
- Install Python 3.5 or newer, from your OS package manager or the [Python download
site](https://www.python.org/downloads/)
- Use `pip3`to install Sphinx and the RTD theme package into your home directory:
```sh
pip3 install --user Sphinx sphinx-rtd-theme
```
If your version of python 3 does not come with `pip` / `pip3`, you may need to
install a `python3-pip`package with `apt` or `yum`, or you can install pip
following [the instructions here](https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/).
You're all set! After this you will only need to use your favorite editor to
work with the RST files.
## How to edit & write RST
A Sphinx documentation project has some structure that it's good to know before
you dive in and start editing or writing content.
### Structure of the project
This project maintains the following structure:
1. `index.rst` : contains the front page of the online documentation and the
initial table of contents tree. Every documentation section is referenced by
a tag next to its name. (e.g. ``Quick Start ``)
2. All other `.rst`files are sections named to match reference tags described
before. So, for the `` reference in `index.rst` you'll find
a `quick_start.rst` file with the content for that section.
3. The configuration used to build the final documentations from the `.rst`
files is set in the `conf.py` file.
### The conf.py file
This file sets the themes, extensions, variables and naming scheme for output
created when building the documentation with Sphinx. Some important elements
include:
- `version` : Describes the current version of `Singularity` that the
documentation is for. We set version to the `major.minor` values, e.g. `3.5`,
as we are not creating separate documentation for each patch release.
- `release`: Would be used to specify the current release of the software being
documented, including patch number, alpha tags etc. We leave this the same as
`version` as we only generate documentation for each `major.minor` version of
singularity.
- `html_theme`: Sets the theme to be used for HTML output. We are using the RTD
or Read The Docs theme.
- `html_context`: Options here control links back to our GitHub repository.
- `html_logo`: The logo for the sidebar
- `html_favicon`: The `favicon`for the entire project
### Cheatsheet to get started with reStructured (RST) Text
RST is similar to Markdown, but has enough differences that you are likely to be
caught out a few times until you are familiar with it. Let's look at some of the
common things you need to do when writing or editing RST.
#### 1. Create a section/subsection/subsubsection title
Sections titles are defined by surrounding or underlining them
with different characters. Each combination of overline/underline and character
used represents a different level section.
- To create a main section title: A main section title is surrounded (above and
below) with `=` characters:
```rst
================
New Main Section
================
```
- To create a sub-section: A sub section title is surrounded (above and below)
with `-` characters:
```rst
---------------
New Sub section
---------------
```
- To create a sub-sub-section: A sub-sub section title is underlined with ``=``
characters:
```rst
New sub-sub section
===================
```
- If you need more levels you can keep going: A sub-sub-sub-section is
underlined with `-` characters.
```rst
New sub-sub-sub section
-----------------------
```
RST doesn't actually set a specific order for the characters you use to
underline and overline titles, as it will pick up the method used for the first
title at each level. Following the convention above, though, will make it easy
to see what level a section is wherever you are working in the documentation.
#### 2. Reference sections
To reference a section in an RST file you need to first create the reference
above the title you need to reference, and second to reference it where you need
the link to the reference section. When you build HTML or PDF output with Sphinx
it will create the links for you, so the reader can jump around the
documentation easily.
##### Step 1: Create the reference
To create the reference on the section you need to link, you must specify a
tag:
```rst
.. _build-docker:
-------------------------
Build from a Docker Image
-------------------------
```
This example will let you refer to the section titled "Build from a Docker
Image" with the tag `build-docker`. Note that the tag here doesn't include the
`_` that you have to prefix it with when creating the reference.
##### Step 2: Reference it
To reference a section you need to use this syntax:
```rst
:ref:`read the section covering docker images `
```
`:ref:` tells Sphinx that this is a reference. In between the `` ` ``you should
provide text for the link, and then the tag you created above between `< >`.
### Further Reading
These are some of the basics of RST. For a more complete introduction, see the
[Sphinx documentation](https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/basics.html)
### Building HTML documentation
To build the HTML documentation, make sure you are in the top level of the
`singularity-userdocs` repository and run:
```sh
make html SKIPCLI=1
```
This will generate a folder called `_build/html` with the output. Open
`index.html` to browse the documentation.
The `SKIPCLI=1` option tells `make` not to generate the CLI reference, which is
created automatically from the Singularity source code. You can generate the CLI
documentation by running `make html` alone. This requires a Go build
environment (see below).
### Generating PDF files from RST
This is very similar to the previous step, you will need to run:
```sh
make latexpdf SKIPCLI=1
```
Output is written into `_build/latex` and the final PDF will be named
`singularity-userdocs.pdf`
### Generating EPUB from RST
Very similar to the previous command, you will just need to run:
```sh
make epub SKIPCLI=1
```
Output is written into `_build/epub` and the final EPUB will be named
`singularity-userdocs.epub`
## Generating CLI docs
The Singularity CLI docs are generated using the actual code from Singularity.
To do this, we include Singularity as a git submodule, and whenever a Makefile
target (like `make html`) is run, Singularity itself is compiled and used to
generate the CLI docs.
However, you might not want to compile Singularity, either because you can't on
your machine, or because you want to test out a quick change to the docs. If
this is the case, you can skip the CLI doc generation using the `SKIPCLI`
argument. For example, to rebuild the HTML docs without including the CLI docs,
just run `make html SKIPCLI=1`.
If Singularity has been updated and you want to synchronize the CLI docs with
the new version of Singularity, you'll have to update the submodule. To do
this, just run:
```bash
git submodule update --remote --merge
git add vendor/src/github.com/apptainer/singularity
git commit
```
This will update the Singularity submodule to the latest version of the master
branch.