grafana/docs

Building the docs locally

When you contribute to documentation, it's a good practice to build the docs on your local machine to make sure your changes appear as you expect. This README explains the process for doing that.

To build a local version, you need to run a process in a Docker container. Grafana periodically updates the Docker image, docs-base, to update the styling of the Docs.

Requirements

• Docker >= 2.1.0.3
• Yarn >= 1.22.4

Build the doc site

First, make sure the Docker daemon is running on your machine. Then, follow these steps:

1. On the command line, first change to the docs folder: cd docs.
2. Run make docs. This launches a preview of the website with the current grafana docs at http://localhost:3002/docs/grafana/latest/ which will refresh automatically when changes are made to content in the sources directory.

If you have the grafana/website repo checked out in the same directory as the grafana repo, then you can run make docs-local-static to use local assets (such as images).

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Content guidelines

Generally, one can edit content in the sources directory.

The following paths are built instead from a typescript file and are auto-generated. Please do not edit these files directly. Instead, navigate to the appropriate typescript source file and edit the content there, then follow the build instructions to generate the markdown files.

Transformations

Auto-generated markdown location:

• docs/sources/panels-visualizations/query-transform-data/transform-data/index.md

Typescript location for editing and instructions:

• scripts/docs/generate-transformations.ts - Includes all content not specific to a transformation.
• public/app/features/transformers/docs/content.ts - Transformation-specific content.

Only use reference style links in the content.ts file or else link text will be visible in the UI.

Contributing

Using relref for internal links

Use the Hugo shortcode relref any time you are linking to other internal docs pages.

Syntax is:

{{< relref "example.md" >}}

You might need to add more context for the link (containing folders and so on, folder/example.md) if Hugo says the relref is ambiguous.

Managing redirects

When moving content around or removing pages it's important that users following old links are properly redirected to the new location. We do this using the aliases feature in Hugo.

If you are moving a page, add an aliases entry in the front matter referencing the old location of the page which will redirect the old url to the new location.

If you are removing a page, add an aliases entry in the front matter of the most-applicable page referencing the location of the page being removed.

If you are copying an existing page as the basis for a new one, be sure to remove any aliases entries in the front matter in your copy to avoid conflicting redirects.

Edit the side menu

The side menu is automatically build from the file structure. Use the weight front matter parameter to order pages.

To specify different menu text from the page title, use the front matter parameter menuTitle.

Add images

Please see our help documentation on Image, diagram, and screenshot guidelines for comprehensive information.

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Deploy changes to grafana.com

When a PR is merged with changes in the docs/sources directory, those changes are automatically synced by a GitHub action (.github/workflows/publish.yml) to the grafana/website repo.

• A PR that targets the main branch syncs to the content/docs/grafana/next directory in the website repository, and publishes to https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/.
• A PR targeting the latest/current release branch syncs to the content/docs/grafana/latest directory in the website repository, and publishes to https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/.

Once the sync is complete, the website will automatically publish to production - no further action is needed.