bigchaindb/docs/README.md

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Copyright © 2020 Interplanetary Database Association e.V.,
BigchainDB and IPDB software contributors.
SPDX-License-Identifier: (Apache-2.0 AND CC-BY-4.0)
Code is Apache-2.0 and docs are CC-BY-4.0
--->

- [Documentation on ReadTheDocs](http://bigchaindb.readthedocs.org/)
- [BigchainDB Upgrade Guides](upgrade-guides/)

# The BigchainDB Documentation Strategy

* Include explanatory comments and docstrings in your code. Write [Google style docstrings](https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html?showone=Comments#Comments) with a maximum line width of 119 characters.
* For quick overview and help documents, feel free to create `README.md` or other `X.md` files, written using [GitHub-flavored Markdown](https://help.github.com/categories/writing-on-github/). Markdown files render nicely on GitHub. We might auto-convert some .md files into a format that can be included in the long-form documentation.
* We use [Sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/) to generate the long-form documentation in various formats (e.g. HTML, PDF).
* We also use [Sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/) to generate Python code documentation (from docstrings and possibly other sources).
* We also use Sphinx to document all REST APIs, with the help of [the `httpdomain` extension](https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-httpdomain/).

# How to Generate the HTML Version of the Long-Form Documentation

If you want to generate the HTML version of the long-form documentation on your local machine, you need to have Sphinx and some Sphinx-contrib packages installed. To do that, go to a subdirectory of `docs` (e.g. `docs/server`) and do:
```bash
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

If you're building the *Server* docs (in `docs/server`) then you must also do:
```bash
pip install -e ../../
```

Note: Don't put `-e ../../` in the `requirements.txt` file. That will work locally
but not on ReadTheDocs.

You can then generate the HTML documentation _in that subdirectory_ by doing:
```bash
make html
```

It should tell you where the generated documentation (HTML files) can be found. You can view it in your web browser.
# Building Docs with Docker Compose

You can also use [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/) to build and host docs.

```text
$ docker-compose up -d bdocs
```

The docs will be hosted on port **33333**, and can be accessed over [localhost](http:/localhost:33333), [127.0.0.1](http:/127.0.0.1:33333)
OR http:/HOST_IP:33333.