Hi docs team,
mattdm recently suggested we should rename the default branch of council-docs from "master" to something else[1]. I suggested "prod" because I have ulterior motives.
Right now, we have separate branches for building the production and staging docs.fp.o. This makes staging useful for testing changes to the build system itself, but not for content. Granted, people can (and should) test content changes locally before pushing, but for changes that span across repos or for sharing rendered changes with someone else for review, that becomes more challenging.
Would it be possible to configure things such that docs.stg.fp.o build from the repos' 'stg' branches and the main docs sites build from the 'prod' branches? This way, every docs repo that gets included by Antora can have stage and production content for "free". Then, for example, if I made a big structural change to the Council docs, I could do that on the stage branch so that it would be built and visible to anyone I wanted to share it with, but the production content would be untouched until we were ready to merge.
Would it be as simple as changing line 6 on site.yml to be 'prod' on the prod branch and 'stg' on the stage branch? (Or better, could we pull it from some environment variable/file/whatever?)
Assuming this is both technically possible and also desirable, would it be possible to have the production docs site support both "master" and "prod" as branch names to provide a migration window. Or would we have to migrate to this model by updating the site.yml on a per-repo basis?
[1] https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/council-docs/issue/86 [2] https://pagure.io/fedora-docs/docs-fp-o/blob/prod/f/site.yml#_6
Le 21 août 2020 00:28:16 GMT+03:00, Ben Cotton bcotton@redhat.com a écrit :
Hi docs team,
mattdm recently suggested we should rename the default branch of council-docs from "master" to something else[1]. I suggested "prod" because I have ulterior motives.
Right now, we have separate branches for building the production and staging docs.fp.o. This makes staging useful for testing changes to the build system itself, but not for content. Granted, people can (and should) test content changes locally before pushing, but for changes that span across repos or for sharing rendered changes with someone else for review, that becomes more challenging.
Would it be possible to configure things such that docs.stg.fp.o build from the repos' 'stg' branches and the main docs sites build from the 'prod' branches? This way, every docs repo that gets included by Antora can have stage and production content for "free". Then, for example, if I made a big structural change to the Council docs, I could do that on the stage branch so that it would be built and visible to anyone I wanted to share it with, but the production content would be untouched until we were ready to merge.
Would it be as simple as changing line 6 on site.yml to be 'prod' on the prod branch and 'stg' on the stage branch? (Or better, could we pull it from some environment variable/file/whatever?)
Assuming this is both technically possible and also desirable, would it be possible to have the production docs site support both "master" and "prod" as branch names to provide a migration window. Or would we have to migrate to this model by updating the site.yml on a per-repo basis?
[1] https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/council-docs/issue/86 [2] https://pagure.io/fedora-docs/docs-fp-o/blob/prod/f/site.yml#_6
Hello, doing it is easy, "by updating the site.yml on a per-repo basis". The one on docs-fp-o
As far as I know, changing the default branch isn't possible.
For local testing, having two yaml files makes it easier for user to understand what they see.
In addition, this change have no impact on localization system. -- Jean-Baptiste
Hey Ben,
Personally I am -1 to this approach with git branches because I think this adds more work and complexity to existing Fedora Docs workflows in other teams.
In theory it makes sense to have a staging and production version of docs, but I don't see this being useful in practice (at least with the docs repos I maintain). Most content contributions I see are minor, small changes that do not warrant a staging deploy to test. I think using git branches for this is confusing. For repos I maintain, if `prod` was the default branch, I would likely choose not to make a `staging` branch because I feel it is unnecessary.
We have invested a lot of time and effort in the container build scripts for the docs, which is cross-platform and generally works well (if you have updated versions of the scripts and not the initial versions circa 2017/2018). I think the emphasis on local testing is the right approach for testing content changes. As a maintainer, if I was concerned about a content change, I would pull it locally from a PR, build it myself, and then decide what to do based on how renders locally.
I understand the motivation for this and it is a good idea, but I think git branches are the wrong approach. The original idea that we had at the 2018 Docs FAD was staging docs would be built instantly, maybe with webhooks. This would allow someone to quickly see their changes in the published Fedora Docs system. The "production" docs would continue to built once an hour, like they are now. This approach makes the staging / production separation more seamless and takes the responsibility off of the person making a PR to decide what branch to make their PR to (if they even realize there are other branches in the first place).
Curious for other thoughts on this.
- Justin
On 8/20/20 5:28 PM, Ben Cotton wrote:
Hi docs team,
mattdm recently suggested we should rename the default branch of council-docs from "master" to something else[1]. I suggested "prod" because I have ulterior motives.
Right now, we have separate branches for building the production and staging docs.fp.o. This makes staging useful for testing changes to the build system itself, but not for content. Granted, people can (and should) test content changes locally before pushing, but for changes that span across repos or for sharing rendered changes with someone else for review, that becomes more challenging.
Would it be possible to configure things such that docs.stg.fp.o build from the repos' 'stg' branches and the main docs sites build from the 'prod' branches? This way, every docs repo that gets included by Antora can have stage and production content for "free". Then, for example, if I made a big structural change to the Council docs, I could do that on the stage branch so that it would be built and visible to anyone I wanted to share it with, but the production content would be untouched until we were ready to merge.
Would it be as simple as changing line 6 on site.yml to be 'prod' on the prod branch and 'stg' on the stage branch? (Or better, could we pull it from some environment variable/file/whatever?)
Assuming this is both technically possible and also desirable, would it be possible to have the production docs site support both "master" and "prod" as branch names to provide a migration window. Or would we have to migrate to this model by updating the site.yml on a per-repo basis?
[1] https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/council-docs/issue/86 [2] https://pagure.io/fedora-docs/docs-fp-o/blob/prod/f/site.yml#_6
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 7:24 AM Justin W. Flory (he/him) jflory7@gmail.com wrote:
Replying out of order, because I can. :-)
I understand the motivation for this and it is a good idea, but I think git branches are the wrong approach. The original idea that we had at the 2018 Docs FAD was staging docs would be built instantly, maybe with webhooks. This would allow someone to quickly see their changes in the published Fedora Docs system. The "production" docs would continue to built once an hour, like they are now. This approach makes the staging / production separation more seamless and takes the responsibility off of the person making a PR to decide what branch to make their PR to (if they even realize there are other branches in the first place).
That's solving a different problem, though. Or at least there's area where they don't overlap. If I push at 1 minute before the hour and the production build starts at the top of the hour, there's essentially no staging. This is less about verifying the small changes and more about getting review of major changes or changes that span multiple repos.
using git branches for this is confusing. For repos I maintain, if `prod` was the default branch, I would likely choose not to make a `staging` branch because I feel it is unnecessary.
And that's fine. The idea isn't to mandate a staging branch, but to make having one trivial when it's desired. The intent, if everything worked the way I would like (which I'm not entirely sure it does), would be to have a staging branch be a zero-effort setup for those who want it and entirely invisible to those who don't.
I recognize that this is a very rare use case, so I don't want to spend much time debating it. You've convinced me that it's not worth the trouble, so unless someone else thinks this is a brilliant idea that we absolutely must do, I consider the matter settled. :-)
docs@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org
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Ben Cotton -
jean-baptiste＠holcroft.fr -
Justin W. Flory (he/him)