@kevinbds/techdocs-common

Common functionalities for TechDocs, to be shared between techdocs-backend plugin and techdocs-cli

This package is used by techdocs-backend to serve docs from different types of publishers (Google GCS, Local, etc.).
It is also used to build docs and publish them to storage, by both techdocs-backend and techdocs-cli.

Usage

Create a preparer instance from the preparers available at which takes an Entity instance.
Run the docs generator on the prepared directory.
Publish the generated directory files to a storage of your choice.

Example:

``js
async () => {
const preparedDir = await preparer.prepare(entity);

const parsedLocationAnnotation = getLocationForEntity(entity);
const { resultDir } = await generator.run({
directory: preparedDir,
dockerClient: dockerClient,
parsedLocationAnnotation,
});

await publisher.publish({
entity: entity,
directory: resultDir,
});
};
`

Features

Currently the build process is split up in these three stages.

- Preparers
- Generators
- Publishers

Preparers read your entity data and creates a working directory with your documentation source code. For example if you have set your backstage.io/techdocs-ref to github:https://github.com/backstage/backstage.git it will clone that repository to a temp folder and pass that on to the generator.

Generators takes the prepared source and runs the techdocs-container` on it. It then passes on the output folder of that build to the publisher.

Publishers gets a folder path from the generator and publish it to your storage solution. Read documentation to know more about configuring storage solutions.
http://backstage.io/docs/features/techdocs/configuration

Any of these can be extended. We want to extend our support to most of the storage providers (Publishers) and source code host providers (Preparers).