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Generating Reference Pages for Kubernetes Components and Tools

This page shows how to use the update-imported-docs tool to generate reference documentation for tools and components in the Kubernetes and Federation repositories.

Before you begin

Getting two repositories

If you don’t already have the kubernetes/website repository, get it now:

mkdir $GOPATH/src
cd $GOPATH/src
go get github.com/kubernetes/website

Determine the base directory of your clone of the kubernetes/website repository. For example, if you followed the preceding step to get the repository, your base directory is $GOPATH/src/github.com/kubernetes/website. The remaining steps refer to your base directory as <web-base>.

If you plan on making changes to the ref docs, and if you don’t already have the kubernetes/kubernetes repository, get it now:

mkdir $GOPATH/src
cd $GOPATH/src
go get github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes

Determine the base directory of your clone of the kubernetes/kubernetes repository. For example, if you followed the preceding step to get the repository, your base directory is $GOPATH/src/github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes. The remaining steps refer to your base directory as <k8s-base>.

Note: If you only need to generate, but not change, the reference docs, you don’t need to manually get the kubernetes/kubernetes repository. When you run the update-imported-docs tool, it automatically clones the kubernetes/kubernetes repository.

Editing the Kubernetes source code

The reference documentation for the Kubernetes components and tools is automatically generated from the Kubernetes source code. If you want to change the reference documentation, the first step is to change one or more comments in the Kubernetes source code. Make the change in your local kubernetes/kubernetes repository, and then submit a pull request to the master branch of github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes.

PR 56942 is an example of a pull request that makes changes to comments in the Kubernetes source code.

Monitor your pull request, and respond to reviewer comments. Continue to monitor your pull request until it is merged into the master branch of the kubernetes/kubernetes repository.

Cherry picking your change into a release branch

Your change is now in the master branch, which is used for development of the next Kubernetes release. If you want your change to appear in the docs for a Kubernetes version that has already been released, you need to propose that your change be cherry picked into the release branch.

For example, suppose the master branch is being used to develop Kubernetes 1.10, and you want to backport your change to the release-1.9 branch. For instructions on how to do this, see Propose a Cherry Pick.

Monitor your cherry-pick pull request until it is merged into the release branch.

Note: Proposing a cherry pick requires that you have permission to set a label and a milestone in your pull request. If you don’t have those permissions, you will need to work with someone who can set the label and milestone for you.

Overview of update-imported-docs

The update-imported-docs tool is located in the kubernetes/website/update-imported-docs/ directory. The tool performs the following steps:

  1. Clones the related repositories specified in a configuration file. For the purpose of generating reference docs, the repositories that are cloned by default are kubernetes-incubator/reference-docs and kubernetes/federation.
  2. Runs commands under the cloned repositories to prepare the docs generator and then generates the Markdown files.
  3. Copies the generated Markdown files to a local clone of the kubernetes/website repository under locations specified in the configuration file.

When the Markdown files are in your local clone of the kubernetes/website repository, you can submit them in a pull request to kubernetes/website.

Customizing the config file

Open <web-base>/update-imported-docs/reference.yml for editing. Do not change the content for the generate-command entry unless you understand what it is doing and need to change the specified release branch.

repos:
- name: reference-docs
  remote: https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/reference-docs.git
  # This and the generate-command below needs a change when reference-docs has
  # branches properly defined
  branch: master  
  generate-command: |
    cd $GOPATH
    git clone https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes.git src/k8s.io/kubernetes
    cd src/k8s.io/kubernetes
    git checkout release-1.11
    make generated_files
    cp -L -R vendor $GOPATH/src
    rm -r vendor
    cd $GOPATH
    go get -v github.com/kubernetes-incubator/reference-docs/gen-compdocs
    cd src/github.com/kubernetes-incubator/reference-docs/
    make comp

In reference.yml, the files field is a list of src and dst fields. The src field specifies the location of a generated Markdown file, and the dst field specifies where to copy this file in the cloned kubernetes/website repository. For example:

repos:
- name: reference-docs
  remote: https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/reference-docs.git
  files:
  - src: gen-compdocs/build/kube-apiserver.md
    dst: content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-apiserver.md
  ...

Note that when there are many files to be copied from the same source directory to the same destination directory, you can use wildcards in the value given to src and you can just provide the directory name as the value for dst. For example:

  files:
  - src: gen-compdocs/build/kubeadm*.md
    dst: content/en/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/

Running the update-imported-docs tool

After having reviewed and/or customized the reference.yaml file, you can run the update-imported-docs tool:

cd <web-base>/update-imported-docs
./update-imported-docs reference.yml

Adding and committing changes in kubernetes/website

List the files that were generated and copied to the kubernetes/website repository:

cd <web-base>
git status

The output shows the new and modified files. For example, the output might look like this:

...

    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/cloud-controller-manager.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/federation-apiserver.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/federation-controller-manager.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-apiserver.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-controller-manager.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-proxy.md
    modified:   content/en/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-scheduler.md
...

Run git add and git commit to commit the files.

Creating a pull request

Create a pull request to the kubernetes/website repository. Monitor your pull request, and respond to review comments as needed. Continue to monitor your pull request until it is merged.

A few minutes after your pull request is merged, your updated reference topics will be visible in the published documentation.

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