acrn-hypervisor/doc/tutorials/docbuild.rst

.. _acrn_doc:

ACRN Documentation Generation
#############################

These instructions will walk you through generating the Project ACRN's
documentation and publishing it to https://projectacrn.github.io.
You can also use these instructions to generate the ACRN documentation
on your local system.

.. contents::
   :local:
   :depth: 1

Documentation Overview
**********************

Project ACRN content is written using the reStructuredText markup
language (``.rst`` file extension) with Sphinx extensions, and processed
using Sphinx to create a formatted stand-alone website. Developers can
view this content either in its raw form as .rst markup files, or you
can generate the HTML content and view it with a web browser directly on
your workstation.

You can read details about `reStructuredText`_, and `Sphinx`_ from
their respective websites.

The project's documentation contains the following items:

* ReStructuredText source files used to generate documentation found at the
  https://projectacrn.github.io website or via the redirect at
  https://docs.projectacrn.org.  All of the reStructuredText sources
  are found in the ``acrn-hypervisor/doc`` folder, or pulled in from sibling
  folders (such as ``misc/``) by the build scripts.

* Doxygen-generated material used to create all API-specific documents
  found at http://projectacrn.github.io/latest/api/.  The documentation build
  process uses doxygen to scan source files in the hypervisor and
  device-model folders (as explained later).

.. image:: images/doc-gen-flow.png
   :align: center

The reStructuredText files are processed by the Sphinx documentation system
and use the breathe extension for including the doxygen-generated API
material.


Set Up the Documentation Working Folders
****************************************

You'll need ``git`` installed to get the working folders set up:

* For an Ubuntu development system use:

  .. code-block:: bash

     sudo apt install git

We use the source header files to generate API documentation and we use
``github.io`` for publishing the generated documentation.  Here's the
recommended folder setup for documentation contributions and generation:

.. code-block: none

   projectacrn/
      acrn-hypervisor/
         debian/
         devicemodel/
         doc/
         hypervisor/
         misc/

The parent ``projectacrn folder`` is there because, if you have repo publishing
rights, we'll also be creating a publishing area later in these steps.

In the following steps, you'll create a fork of the upstream ``acrn-hypervisor``
repo to your personal GitHub account, clone your personal fork to your local
development computer, and then link that to the upstream repo as well:

#. Use your browser to visit https://github.com/projectacrn and do a
   fork of the **acrn-hypervisor** repo to your personal GitHub account.)

   .. image:: images/acrn-doc-fork.png
      :align: center

#. At a command prompt, create a working folder on your development computer and
   clone your personal acrn-hypervisor repository:

   .. code-block:: bash

      cd ~
      mkdir projectacrn && cd projectacrn
      git clone https://github.com/<github-username>/acrn-hypervisor.git

#. For the cloned local repo, tell git about the upstream repo:

   .. code-block:: bash

      cd acrn-hypervisor
      git remote add upstream https://github.com/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor.git

   After that, you'll have ``origin`` pointing to your cloned personal repo and
   ``upstream`` pointing to the project repo.

#. If you haven't done so already, be sure to configure git with your name
   and email address for the ``signed-off-by`` line in your commit messages:

   .. code-block:: bash

      git config --global user.name "David Developer"
      git config --global user.email "david.developer@company.com"

Install the Documentation Tools
*******************************

Our documentation processing has been tested to run with Python 3.8.10 and
later, and these other tools:

* breathe                   version: 4.34.0 (>=4.2.3)
* sphinx                    version: 5.3.0  (>=3.2.1, <6.0)
* docutils                  version: 0.16.1 (>=0.16, <=0.17.1)
* sphinx-rtd-theme          version: 1.0.0
* sphinx-tabs               version: 3.4.0 (>=1.3.0, <=3.4.0)
* doxygen                   version: 1.8.17 (Ubuntu 20.04) and 1.9.1 (Ubuntu 22.04)

Depending on your Linux version, install the needed tools. You may get a
different (newer) version of doxygen (installed using ``apt``) than shown here,
that may also work.

For Ubuntu use:

.. code-block:: bash

   sudo apt install doxygen python3-pip \
     python3-wheel make graphviz xsltproc

Then use ``pip3`` to install the remaining Python-based tools specified in the
:acrn_file:`doc/scripts/requirements.txt` file:

.. code-block:: bash

   cd ~/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor/doc
   pip3 install --user -r scripts/requirements.txt

Use this command to add ``$HOME/.local/bin`` to the front of your ``PATH`` so the system will
find expected versions of these Python utilities such as ``sphinx-build`` and
``breathe`` (you should first check whether this directory is already on your path):

.. code-block:: bash

   printf "\nexport PATH=\$HOME/.local/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

.. important::

   You will need to open a new terminal for this change to take effect.
   Adding this to your ``~/.bashrc`` file ensures it is set by default.

And with that you're ready to generate the documentation.

.. note::

   We've provided a script you can run to show what versions of the
   documentation building tools are installed and compare with the
   tool versions shown above. This tool will also verify you're using tool
   versions known to work together::

      doc/scripts/show-versions.py

   for example:

   .. code-block:: console

      ~/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor/doc$ scripts/show-versions.py

      doc build tool versions found on your system...

       breathe                   version: 4.34.0
       sphinx                    version: 5.3.0
       docutils                  version: 0.17.1
       sphinx-rtd-theme          version: 1.0.0
       sphinx-tabs               version: 3.4.0
       doxygen                   version: 1.9.1

Extra Tools for Generating PDF
==============================

While the primary output for ACRN documentation is for an HTML website, you can
also generate a PDF version of the documentation.  A few extra tools are needed
only if you want to create PDF output.  For Ubuntu users add these additional
packages:

.. code-block:: bash

   sudo apt install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-fonts-recommended \
     texlive-latex-extra latexmk texlive-xetex xindy

Documentation Presentation Theme
********************************

Sphinx supports easy customization of the generated HTML documentation
appearance through the use of themes.  Replace the theme files and do
another ``make html`` and the output layout and style is changed. The
sphinx build system creates document cache information that attempts to
expedite documentation rebuilds, but occasionally can cause an unexpected error or
warning to be generated.  Doing a ``make clean`` to create a clean
generation environment and a ``make html`` again generally fixes these issues.

The ``read-the-docs`` theme is installed as part of the
``requirements.txt`` list above.  Tweaks to the standard
``read-the-docs`` appearance are added by using CSS
and JavaScript customization found in ``doc/static``, and
theme template overrides found in ``doc/_templates``.

Run the Documentation Processors
********************************

The ``acrn-hypervisor/doc`` directory has all the ``.rst`` source files, extra
tools, and ``Makefile`` for generating a local copy of the ACRN technical
documentation. (Some additional ``.rst`` files and other material is extracted
or generated from the ``/misc`` folder as part of the ``Makefile``.)

.. code-block:: bash

   cd ~/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor/doc
   make html

Depending on your development system, it will take less than two minutes to
collect and generate the HTML content.  When done, you can view the HTML
output with your browser started at
``~/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor/doc/_build/html/index.html``. You can
also ``cd`` to the ``_build/html`` folder and run a local web server
with the command:

.. code-block:: bash

   cd _build/html
   python3 -m http.server

and use your web browser to open the URL:  ``http://localhost:8000``.

Generate PDF Output
===================

After the HTML content is generated, it leaves artifacts behind that you can
use to generate PDF output using the Sphinx ``latex`` builder.  This
builder initially creates LaTeX output in the ``_build/latex`` folder and then
uses the ``latexmk`` tool to create the final ``acrn.pdf`` file in the same
folder.  This process automatically makes a few passes over the content to create the index
and resolve intra-document hyperlinks, and produces plenty of progress messages along the
way.  The Sphinx-generated output for tables and code blocks also yields many "underfill"
and "overfill" messages from the ``latex`` builder that can't be easily
suppressed or fixed.  Because of that, we recommend running this PDF generation
with the ``-silent`` options, like this (after you've run ``make html``:

.. code-block:: bash

   make latexpdf LATEXMKOPTS="-silent -f"

For convenience, we've also created a make target called ``pdf`` that will
generate the HTML content and then make the PDF file in one step:

.. code-block:: bash

   make pdf

This make target runs quietly, and then verifies that no unexpected message from
the build process are produced (using the :ref:`message filtering process
<filter_expected>` explained below.  Either way, when the build completes, the
generated PDF file is in ``_build/latex/acrn.pdf``.

Publish Content
***************

If you have merge rights to the projectacrn repo called
``projectacrn.github.io``, you can update the public project documentation
found at https://projectacrn.github.io and redirected from
https://docs.projectacrn.org.

You'll need to do a one-time clone of the upstream repo (we publish
directly to the upstream repo rather than to a personal forked copy):

.. code-block:: bash

   cd ~/projectacrn
   git clone https://github.com/projectacrn/projectacrn.github.io.git

Then, after you've verified the generated HTML from ``make html`` looks
good, you can push directly to the publishing site with:

.. code-block:: bash

   make publish

This uses git commands to synchronize the new content with what's
already published and will delete files in the publishing repo's
**latest** folder that are no longer needed. New or changed files from
the newly-generated HTML content are added to the GitHub pages
publishing repo.  The public site at https://projectacrn.github.io will
be updated by the `GitHub pages system
<https://guides.github.com/features/pages/>`_, typically within a few
minutes.

Document Versioning
*******************

The https://projectacrn.github.io site has a document version selector
at the top of the left nav panel.  The contents of this version
selector are defined in the ``conf.py`` sphinx configuration file,
specifically:

.. code-block:: python
   :emphasize-lines: 5-6

   html_context = {
      'current_version': current_version,
      'docs_title': docs_title,
      'is_release': is_release,
      'versions': ( ("latest", "/latest/"),
                    ("2.7", "/2.7/"),
                    ("2.6", "/2.6/"),
                    ("2.5", "/2.5/"),
                    ("2.0", "/2.0/"),
                    ("1.6.1", "/1.6.1/"),
                    ("1.0", "/1.0/"),   # keep 1.0
                  )
       }


As new versions of ACRN documentation are added, update this
``versions`` selection list to include the version number and publishing
folder.  Note that there's no direct selection to go to a newer version
from an older one, without going to ``latest`` first.

By default, documentation build and publishing both assume we're generating
documentation for the main branch and publishing to the ``/latest/``
area on https://projectacrn.github.io. When we're generating the
documentation for a tagged version (e.g., 2.7), check out that version
of the repo, and add some extra flags to the ``make`` commands:

.. code-block:: bash

   cd ~/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor/doc
   git checkout v2.7
   make clean
   make DOC_TAG=release RELEASE=2.7 html
   make DOC_TAG=release RELEASE=2.7 publish

.. _filter_expected:

Filter Expected Warnings
************************

Alas, there are some known issues with the doxygen/Sphinx/Breathe
processing that generates warnings for some constructs, in particular
around unnamed structures in nested unions or structs.
While these issues are being considered for fixing in
Sphinx/Breathe, we've added a post-processing filter on the output of
the documentation build process to check for "expected" messages from the
generation process output.

The output from the Sphinx build is processed by the Python script
``scripts/filter-known-issues.py`` together with a set of filter
configuration files in the ``.known-issues/doc`` folder.  (This
filtering is done as part of the ``Makefile``.)

If you're contributing components included in the ACRN API
documentation and run across these warnings, you can include filtering
them out as "expected" warnings by adding or editing a conf file in the
``.known-issues/doc`` folder, following the example of other conf files
found there.

.. _reStructuredText: http://sphinx-doc.org/rest.html
.. _Sphinx: http://sphinx-doc.org/