DocKnot 1.02
(package documentation generator)
Maintained by Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>
Copyright 2013-2017 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>. This software is
distributed under a BSD-style license. Please see the section LICENSE
below for more information.
BLURB
DocKnot is a system for generating consistent human-readable software
package documentation from metadata files and templates. The metadata
is primarily JSON files, but can include files of documentation
snippets. The goal is to generate both web pages and distributed
documentation files (such as README) from the same source, using
templates for consistency across multiple packages.
DESCRIPTION
After years of maintaining a variety of small free software packages, I
found the most tedious part of making a new release was updating the
documentation in multiple locations. Copyright dates would change,
prerequisites and package descriptions would change, and I had to update
at least the package README file and its web pages separately. The last
straw was when GitHub became popular and I wanted to provide a Markdown
version of README as well, avoiding the ugly text rendering on the
GitHub page for a package.
This package uses one metadata directory as its source information and
generates all the various bits of documentation for a package. This
allows me to make any changes in one place and then just regenerate the
web page, included documentation, and other files to incorporate those
changes. It also lets me make changes to the templates to improve
shared wording and push that out to every package I maintain during its
next release, without having to remember which changes I wanted to make.
DocKnot was designed and written for my personal needs, and I'm not sure
it will be useful for anyone else. At the least, the template files are
rather specific to my preferences about how to write package
documentation, and the web page output is in my personal thread language
as opposed to HTML. I'm not sure if I'll have the time to make it a
more general tool. But you're certainly welcome to use it if you find
it useful, send pull requests to make it more general, or take ideas
from it for your own purposes.
Currently included in this package are just the App::DocKnot module
(which contains most of the logic), a small docknot driver program, and
the templates I use for my own software. Over time, it may include more
of my web publishing framework, time permitting.
REQUIREMENTS
Perl 5.18 or later and Module::Build are required to build this module.
The following additional Perl modules are required to use it:
* File::BaseDir
* File::ShareDir
* JSON
* Perl6::Slurp
* Template (part of Template Toolkit)
IPC::System::Simple is required to run the test suite. The following
additional Perl modules will be used by the test suite if present:
* Devel::Cover
* Test::MinimumVersion
* Test::Perl::Critic
* Test::Pod
* Test::Pod::Coverage
* Test::Spelling
* Test::Strict
* Test::Synopsis
All are available on CPAN. Those tests will be skipped if the modules
are not available.
To enable tests that don't detect functionality problems but are used to
sanity-check the release, set the environment variable RELEASE_TESTING
to a true value. To enable tests that may be sensitive to the local
environment or that produce a lot of false positives without uncovering
many problems, set the environment variable AUTHOR_TESTING to a true
value.
BUILDING AND INSTALLATION
DocKnot uses Module::Build and can be installed using the same process
as any other Module::Build module:
perl Build.PL
./Build
./Build test
./Build install
You will have to run the last command as root unless you're installing
into a local Perl module tree in your home directory.
SUPPORT
The DocKnot web page at:
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/docknot/
will always have the current version of this package, the current
documentation, and pointers to any additional resources.
For bug tracking, use the CPAN bug tracker at:
https://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Name=App-DocKnot
However, please be aware that I tend to be extremely busy and work
projects often take priority. I'll save your report and get to it as
soon as I can, but it may take me a couple of months.
SOURCE REPOSITORY
DocKnot is maintained using Git. You can access the current source on
GitHub at:
https://github.com/rra/docknot
or by cloning the repository at:
https://git.eyrie.org/git/devel/docknot.git
or view the repository via the web at:
https://git.eyrie.org/?p=devel/docknot.git
The eyrie.org repository is the canonical one, maintained by the author,
but using GitHub is probably more convenient for most purposes. Pull
requests are gratefully reviewed and normally accepted. It's probably
better to use the CPAN bug tracker than GitHub issues, though, to keep
all Perl module issues in the same place.
LICENSE
The DocKnot package as a whole is covered by the following copyright
statement and license:
Copyright 2013-2017 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Some files in this distribution are individually released under
different licenses, all of which are compatible with the above general
package license but which may require preservation of additional
notices. All required notices, and detailed information about the
licensing of each file, are recorded in the LICENSE file.
For any copyright range specified by files in this package as YYYY-ZZZZ,
the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.