valadoc-www - A Valadoc.org spinoff

Learn Vala, do future.

This project generates a version of the valadoc.org website that is statically generated.

The goal is for people to easily have a local copy of valadoc.org, that can also be statically hosted and can easily be experimented on.

You can view the output of a core preset build here: https://colinkiama.github.io/valadoc-www/

Screenshots

Build Instructions

In order to build the docs you will need the following:

• valadoc >= 0.35.0
• Node.js (LTS Version) - We recommend using nvm or nvm-windows for easily managing different node versions.
• 4 GB of free space

On elementary OS or Ubuntu run:

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vala-team
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gcc libgirepository1.0-dev libgee-0.8-dev git libtemplate-glib-1.0-dev \
libvaladoc-dev meson ninja-build unzip valac valadoc wget xsltproc

Next, install JS dependencies:

After you have valadoc installed, you can move to building the documentation.

First make sure that you are currently the root of the project.

Also, there's a chance that these build scripts may not be have permissions to run at first. Run the following command to give the build scripts executable permissions so that they can run on your machine:

chmod +x ./task/*

Now, to build the programs and assets needed to generated the website run this command:

./task/build

Now run this command to generate the website:

./task/run

By default, these commands will generate documentation for all packages.

This may take a while since it's generating documentation for a lot of packages. If you aren't planning on generating documentation for all packages in valadoc.org then I suggest tyring out some configuration options.

The generated website will be available in a directory called valadoc.org. You can open up the index.html file in a web browser to start browsing the documentation.

If you're planning on serving the website on a HTTP server (or you want to use a dev server), feel free to use the BASE_URL environment variable.

This will help you avoid asset loading issues with stylesheets and scripts in when the site is hosted on a subpath e.g when you host the site on GitHub Pages.

Development Commands

Build:

./task/build

Run generator:

./task/run

Clean Project:

./task/clean

Configuration Options

Environment Variables

You can override which Vala compiler you want to use by setting the VALAC environment variable when running the task/build commands. Meson is aware of it.

There are also plenty of ways to customise the behaviour of the site generator. Check out the top of the task/build and task/run files for environment variables that you can set to change the behaviour to your liking.

Two more important options to note are these variables that affect the task/build script.

DISABLE_GIRS_REPO and DISABLE_EXTRA_VAPIS_REPO. By setting them to true (or any other value that isn't false or an empty string), the task/build script skips the steps of cloning each respective Git repository. This helps you save a lot of space and time, especially when you disable the vala-girs with the DISABLE_GIRS_REPO option (it takes up 200MB worth of disk space).

Warning: Due to the way meson works, if you set some of these variables, the options are saved, even if you run the task/build command again with no environment variables the next time. In cases where you just want the default behaviour to happen, it's recommended to either:

• Delete the build directory
• Run the task/clean script

Presets

By default, documentation is generated for all packages. However, you can customise which packages get generated using the PACKAGES variable. This can get quite tedious so there is also a PRESET variable that can select a range of packages for you. Here is what you can use:

Value	Description
core	Core GNOME packages, posix and linux packages
gtk4	A variety of packages to help you make GUI Applications powered by GTK 4
elementary	An extension of the gtk4 preset with elementary OS specific packages

Add New Packages

Open documentation/packages.xml and add a new package-entry.

Use <external-package> to create external links:

<external-package name="package-name" link="http://path/to/docs">
  short description
</external-package>

Use <package> to build and include documentation for vapi files:

<package name="gdl-1.0">
  short description
</package>

The following attributes are supported:

Name	Description
name	The vapi name
deprecated	Set it to '"true"' to mark a package as deprecated
maintainers	List of binding maintainers
gir	The GIR file used to extract documentation from
c-docs	Link to C documentation
ignore	Do not build documentation for this entry
home	Homepage link
flags	Additional vala flags (Missing dependencies, ...)
gallery	Link to a GTK-Doc widget gallery
vapi-image-source	Source to download images from

Referenced GIR and vapi-files have to be part of one of the following repositories:

• vala
• vala-girs
• vala-extra-vapis

Add New Source Code Examples

Copy your examples to examples/<vapi-name>/ and add a new entry to examples/<vapi-name>/<vapi-name>.valadoc.examples:

<example>
  <title>Example Title</title>
  <image>optional-screenshot.png</image>
  <file>file-name-1.vala</file>
  <file>file-name-2.vala</file>
  <compile>valac file-name1.vala file-name-2.vala ...</compile>
  <node>Associated.Symbol.name1</node>
  <node>Associated.Symbol.name2</node>
</example>

If this is the first example for the package, add a line to the examples.txt.

Add Handwritten Documentation

Create a new file called <vapi-name>.valadoc in documentation/<vapi-name>/:

...

/**
 * My valadoc comment
 */
c::c_symbol_name

...

/**
 * My valadoc comment
 */
Vala.Symbol.Name

Tool Overview

• build/generator: Parses packages.xml files describing all packages. It is responsible for building up the page. It fetches resources such as images from specified sources, computes valadoc-calls, builds documentation for specified packages and puts-together the whole page. (task/run)
• build/valadoc-example-gen: Internally used to generate example listings.
• build/valadoc-example-tester: Compiles and checks all registered examples. (task/test_examples)

Common Pitfalls

error: failed to load driver

• Your valadoc version does not support the requested vala version. Install a recent vala version and recompile valadoc.
• Change VALAC_VERSION in task/build and/or task/run.

Other errors:

• Check LOG in the root of this repo for more information
• Have you run out of disk space?

Contact And Help

• Git Repository
• Issue Tracker, valadoc-www
• Issue Tracker, valadoc (now a part of Vala)
• Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#vala:gnome.org (#vala:gnome.org)
• Mail: colinkiama@gmail.com