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Simon Michael a98f007ed1 ;doc:DOCS
2025-09-26 09:22:50 -10:00

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Docs

Four kinds of documentation

“There is a secret that needs to be understood in order to write good software documentation: there isn’t one thing called documentation, there are four. They are: tutorials, how-to guides, explanation and technical reference. They represent four different purposes or functions, and require four different approaches to their creation.” –[Daniele Procida] (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289832)

hledger’s documentation structure

2019: out of date, needs update.

Project documentation lives in a number of places:

  • site/*.md is the hledger.org website content, which is generated with hakyll[-std] and pandoc
  • haddock documentation in the code appears on Hackage
  • short blurbs: cabal files, module headers, HCAR, GSOC project, ..
  • doc/notes.org has some old developer notes
  • developer reports (profiles, benchmarks, coverage..) in doc/profs, sometimes published at hledger.org/profs
  • https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/doc

site/ is now a symlink to the separate hledger_site repo.

See also Shake.hs.

hledger doc files can be divided into several groups:

  1. Project admin/dev notes not published on the website. These are kept in this directory (doc/). They include:

    doc/finance/      project finances
doc/hcar/         Haskell Community and Activities Report entries
doc/lib.m4        common macros used in package manuals
doc/manpage.*     misc. templates for rendering package manuals
doc/mockups/      exploratory developer mockups   
doc/profs/        a place for long-term profiling/performance data

  2. Project doc files required to be in the top directory:

    README.md         the main project readme, displayed on github
LICENSE           the default project license

  3. Code/API docs in haskell source files as haddock comments:

    hledger*/**/*.hs  haddock module and function docs in most source files

  4. Per-package descriptions, readmes, changelogs, and reference manuals. These are in the respective package directories:

    hledger*/package.yaml    source for package metadata (description, etc.)
hledger*/README          package readme, displayed on hackage
hledger*/CHANGES         package changelog, displayed on hackage
hledger*/hledger*.m4.md  package manual source file(s)

  5. The project website and additional docs - home page, FAQ, tutorials, how-tos, developer guide, etc. These are in the site directory:

    site/             hledger.org website content, templates, assets

Workflows

Last updated: 2025-09

Update manuals’ content

Updates to the manuals’ content are welcome and encouraged!

Note the various formats and versions of the manuals are generated from source files. Don’t edit the generated files, such as hledger/hledger.md in the hledger repo or site/src/1.50/hledger.md in the hledger_site repo; update the appropriate source file(s) instead. These will be in the master branch of the hledger repo. If you click “Edit this page” on a current release manual on the website, you’ll see a comment listing its source files.)

In the main hledger repo, find and update It is usually hledger/hledger.m4.md or hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/*.md for the hledger manual, or hledger-ui/hledger-ui.m4.md for the hledger-ui manual, or hledger-web/hledger-web.m4.md for the hledger-web manual.

Changes to manuals’ content can be committed with the related code changes, or separately.

Compile the Shake script

Shake.hs automates some doc maintenance tasks (complementing Justfile). If you use it, it’s best to compile it first: in the main hledger repo, run:

$ ./Shake.hs

Update generated manuals after content changes

Contributors don’t need to do this; usually it’s done periodically by the maintainer. It requires unix tools such as m4, makeinfo and pandoc. It affects future hledger releases, and (once pushed) the dev manuals on hledger.org.

In the main hledger repo: first, set current year and month for the man pages:

$ just mandates

Then regenerate the text, man, info, and markdown manuals in hledger*/ from their source files:

$ ./Shake manuals

To also commit the generated files, run it with -c:

$ ./Shake manuals -c

Update hledger binaries with latest manuals included

The next build of the hledger executables will embed the latest text, man and info manuals from hledger*/. Eg:

$ stack build

Update dev manuals on the website

When updates to the generated manuals land in the master branch of the hledger repo on github, the latest (dev) manuals on hledger.org will update automatically.

(The website manuals are rendered from site/src/VERSION/*.md in the hledger_site repo, which are symlinked copies of hledger/hledger.md, hledger-ui/hledger-ui.md and hledger-web/hledger-web.md in the hledger repo.)

Update release manuals on the website

Contributors can do this, but doing it the right way is a little complicated; you can also ask the maintainer to do it.

The release manuals on the website are rendered from site/src/1.50/*.md, site/src/1.43/*.md, etc. In the hledger repo, after updating the generated manuals in master with ./Shake manuals -c: with the hledger_site repo symlinked as ./site,

for each major release REL that needs updating,

  1. Cherry pick appropriate manuals update commit(s) from master to REL-branch
  2. Run just site-manuals-snapshot REL

When these commits land in the hledger_site repo on github, the release manuals on hledger.org will update automatically.

201901 docs reorg (#920, WIP)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/hledger/t2nVr3zER8Q/discussion

On Oct 26, 2018, at 1:47 PM, Simon Michael simon@joyful.com wrote:

A quick heads-up: I am feeling like stepping back from github wiki, and reorganising our docs like so:

Two repos:

  1. hledger - code and hard docs
  • code and code docs (haddock docs & doctest examples)
  • developer docs (READMEs in md or org format)
  • product manuals (hledger/hledger.m4.md)
  • release notes and announcements
  • HCAR entries
  1. hledger-site - website and soft docs
  • hledger.org content, resources, site infrastructure
  • user cookbook, how-tos, articles
  • links to blog posts, discussions etc.
  • other resources relating to our web presence/marketing

If you disagree, let’s discuss. Some quick considerations:

  • moving docs to the wiki hasn’t affected the contribution rate
  • using the wiki increases our dependence on github and makes our work less self-contained and future-proof
  • the wiki docs don’t look great, aren’t very flexible, & don’t integrate well with our site & static docs
  • using two docs systems increases complexity
  • dev docs in the wiki are too far from the code, and compete with READMEs

PS:

  • Why not go back to just one repo for everything ? Or if two repos, why not put all docs in one of them ?

Dev docs are most discoverable and maintainable right there in the main repo, ie as READMEs. Likewise for API docs (haddocks) and the reference manuals (hledger/hledgerm4.md). We want all of these updated in lock step with code/tooling changes.

Other (“soft”) docs are needed, but these have a more relaxed process, schedule, and scope (eg bookkeeping advice). They occasionally generate a lot of noise in the commit log, and I think it’s a good to keep that out of the code history. The website (home and other pages, site design, site infrastructure) generates similar commit storms and is somewhat independent of code, so it goes in the soft docs repo too.

These are my thoughts, but I have an open mind if you see a better way.

me (Simon Michael (sm) change)

10/27/18 Still plenty of time to discuss and reconsider, but see also https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/920 https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/921

I’ll probably make a start on the first one (consolidating dev docs in main repo).