Flyout: "On GitHub" section with View and Edit buttons

[humitos]

The actual flyout has a section called "On GitHub" that shows two links to View and Edit the actual file on GitHub. These are just links to the exact URL for those file under github.com/.

This is done via injecting some data in the build process via the readthedocs-sphinx-ext: https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs-sphinx-ext/blob/7c60d1646c12ac0b83d61abfbdd5bcd77d324124/readthedocs_ext/_templates/readthedocs-insert.html.tmpl#L23

Keeping in mind this currently work only for Sphinx projects and that we are deprecating this extension, how we can find a reliable way to implement this feature for all the doctools and without having to inject anything in the build process? Do we have to expose this feature in the flyout? Wouldn't be better to rely on the doctool for this since it has all the data to map the source file to the final URL? Note that Read the Docs Sphinx theme already has build-it support for this https://sphinx-rtd-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuring.html#file-wide-metadata

• Related: "Edit on GitHub" fails when docs are in a different repo (git submodules) #1802
• Related: How do disable "On GitHub" options in RTD footer #5570
• Related: Feature Request: Global edit_on_github_branch setting for all versions #6297

Note: this issue is opened here instead of the addons repository because the issue is about the API response. In fact, the addons already implement the VCS section of the flyout when it has the correct data.

[ericholscher]

Next step here is figuring out if we even want to keep this feature, and if so what's the best way to do it.

[humitos]

Note that this is related in some way with readthedocs/actions#4 since we require a similar solution there as well.

[humitos]

Does anyone have an idea about how to do this in a reliable way and if it's worth the effort?

Honestly, I don't think we will be able to solve this in a generic way that works for most/all the documentation tools. Usually, documentation tools and themes that care about this feature, they implement it themselves and even expose a configuration setting so users can enable/disable it.

Furo	Read the Docs	Material for MkDocs

With that context, it seems it's redundant to re-implement this feature inside the flyout. In particular, if we don't have a clear and easy way to implement it. At this point, I would just decide to not implement this feature in the new flyout and close this issue as not planned. What do you think?

[agjohnson]

I'll also add that the only time I ever find myself clicking on these links in the flyout is when I want to jump to the repo on GitHub, and mostly just for debugging purposes not to view the source file.

I always want that link to just go to https://github.com/user/repo instead, which could be an option too.

[humitos]

OK. I will close this issue as not planned then.