Documentation is published on https://doc.owncloud.org and https://doc.owncloud.com.
The documentation Wiki is available for tips, tricks, edge cases, and anyone who wants to contribute more easily, without having to learn Git and Sphinx.
See the Style Guide for formatting and style conventions.
This repository hosts four manuals:
Please work in the appropriate branch. Stable7 is for ownCloud 7, stable8 is 8.0, stable8.1 is 8.1, stable8.2 is 8.2, and master is version 9.
Please wrap lines at 80 characters.
Important: Please copy the links to any relevant Github PRs or issues at the end of every doc page. This makes it much easier to go back and find information and fact-check. Like this example:
.. Github references
.. Foo PR title #100 https://github.com/owncloud/core/pull/100
Note
configuration_server/config_sample_php_parameters.rst is auto-generated from the core config.sample.php file; changes to this file must be made in core https://github.com/owncloud/core/tree/master/config
As this grows it may be moved to its own page.
All documentation in this repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0).
Source files are written using the Sphinx Documentation Generator. The syntax follows the reStructuredText style, and can also be edited from GitHub.
Contributing to the documentation requires a Github account. Make sure you are working in the correct branch for your version of ownCloud or client apps. If your edits pertain to multiple manual versions, be prepared to backport as needed.
To edit a document, you can edit the .rst files on your local system, or work directly on Github. The latter is only suitable for small fixes and improvements because substantial editing efforts can better be controlled on your local PC.
The best way is to install a complete Sphinx build environment and work on your local PC. You will be able to make your own local builds, which is the fastest and best way to preview for errors. Sphinx will report syntax errors, missing images, and formatting errors. The Github preview is not complete and misses many mistakes. Create a new branch against the master or stable branch you are editing, make your edits, then push your new branch to Github and open a new PR.
To edit on Github, fork the repository (see top-right of the screen, under your username). You will then be able to make changes easily. Once done, you can create a pull request and get the changes reviewed and back into the official repository.
First, make sure that the following are installed:
Python 2 (2.6.0 or better, Python 3 is not yet supported!)
Python Image Library (PIL) - (the package is called something like python-pillow)
Sphinx (e.g. sudo yum install python-sphinx), on Mac: sudo easy_install Sphinx
Sphinx PHPDomain (e.g. sudo easy_install sphinxcontrib-phpdomain)
rst2pdf (e.g. sudo easy_install rst2pdf)
If you’re on Arch Linux, the build script is called sphinx-build2 which will fail. You will need to provide a link to the expected script name:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/sphinx-build2 /usr/bin/sphinx-build
...then enter any manual directory, then run make html. The result can be found in the _build/html subdirectory. PDFs can be built with the make latexpdf command and are found in _build/latex/ directory.
Running setup.cmd will install Python 2.7 and install all dependencies.
Enter any manual and clicking the “Build HTML” shortcut will create a HTML build. Likewise, “Build PDF” will build the PDF using the more lightweight, but feature-incomplete RST2PDF tool. The results are in _build/html and _build/pdf respectively.
Sometimes, existing documentation might be in Word or LibreOffice documents. To make it part of this documentation collection, follow these steps: