The Maven Handbook

• 1: Overview
• 2: Contribution Guidelines
• 3: Introducing Maven
• 4: Common concepts
• 5: Settings and Environment
• 6: Project Object Model
• 7: Build Lifecycle
• 8: Grand Picture
• 9: Best Practices

1 - Overview

The Overview is where your users find out about your project. Depending on the size of your docset, you can have a separate overview page (like this one) or put your overview contents in the Documentation landing page (like in the Docsy User Guide).

Try answering these questions for your user in this page:

What is it?

Introduce your project, including what it does or lets you do, why you would use it, and its primary goal (and how it achieves it). This should be similar to your README description, though you can go into a little more detail here if you want.

Why do I want it?

Help your user know if your project will help them. Useful information can include:

• What is it good for?: What types of problems does your project solve? What are the benefits of using it?

• What is it not good for?: For example, point out situations that might intuitively seem suited for your project, but aren’t for some reason. Also mention known limitations, scaling issues, or anything else that might let your users know if the project is not for them.

• What is it not yet good for?: Highlight any useful features that are coming soon.

Where should I go next?

Give your users next steps from the Overview. For example:

• Getting Started: Get started with $project
• Examples: Check out some example code!

2 - Contribution Guidelines

We use Hugo to format and generate our website, the Docsy theme for styling and site structure, and Netlify to manage the deployment of the site. Hugo is an open-source static site generator that provides us with templates, content organisation in a standard directory structure, and a website generation engine. You write the pages in Markdown (or HTML if you want), and Hugo wraps them up into a website.

All submissions, including submissions by project members, require review. We use GitHub pull requests for this purpose. Consult GitHub Help for more information on using pull requests.

Quick start with Netlify

Here’s a quick guide to updating the docs. It assumes you’re familiar with the GitHub workflow and you’re happy to use the automated preview of your doc updates:

1. Fork the Goldydocs repo on GitHub.
2. Make your changes and send a pull request (PR).
3. 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.)
4. 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!
5. Click Details to the right of “Deploy preview ready” to see a preview of your updates.
6. Continue updating your doc and pushing your changes until you’re happy with the content.
7. 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.
2. 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.
3. Follow the rest of the Quick start with Netlify process above to make, preview, and propose 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 to install Hugo and any other tools you need. You’ll need at least Hugo version 0.146.0 (we recommend using the most recent available version), and it must be the extended version, which supports SCSS.

2. Fork the Goldydocs repo repo into your own project, then create a local copy using git clone.

   git clone --branch v0.12.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/google/docsy-example.git
   

3. Run hugo server in the site root directory. 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.

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

Creating an issue

If you’ve found a problem in the docs, but you’re not sure how to fix it yourself, please create an issue in the Goldydocs repo. 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.

Useful resources

• Docsy user guide: All about Docsy, including how it manages navigation, look and feel, and multi-language support.
• Hugo documentation: Comprehensive reference for Hugo.
• Github Hello World!: A basic introduction to GitHub concepts and workflow.

3 - Introducing Maven

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

4 - Common concepts

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

5 - Settings and Environment

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

6 - Project Object Model

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

7 - Build Lifecycle

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

8 - Grand Picture

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?

9 - Best Practices

Information in this section helps your user try your project themselves.

• What do your users need to do to start using your project? This could include downloading/installation instructions, including any prerequisites or system requirements.

• Introductory “Hello World” example, if appropriate. More complex tutorials should live in the Tutorials section.

Consider using the headings below for your getting started page. You can delete any that are not applicable to your project.

Prerequisites

Are there any system requirements for using your project? What languages are supported (if any)? Do users need to already have any software or tools installed?

Installation

Where can your user find your project code? How can they install it (binaries, installable package, build from source)? Are there multiple options/versions they can install and how should they choose the right one for them?

Setup

Is there any initial setup users need to do after installation to try your project?

Try it out!

Can your users test their installation, for example by running a command or deploying a Hello World example?