.. _metadocumentation:

==================================================
Documentation Documentation AKA Meta-Documentation
==================================================


How to build documentation
--------------------------

Let's say you are writing documentation, and want to see the `sphinx
<http://sphinx.pocoo.org/>`__ output before you push it.
The documentation will be generated in the ``html`` directory.

.. code-block:: bash

    cd Theano/
    python ./doc/scripts/docgen.py

If you don't want to generate the pdf, do the following:

.. code-block:: bash

    cd Theano/
    python ./doc/scripts/docgen.py --nopdf


For more details:

.. code-block:: bash

   $ python doc/scripts/docgen.py --help
   Usage: doc/scripts/docgen.py [OPTIONS]
     -o <dir>: output the html files in the specified dir
     --rst: only compile the doc (requires sphinx)
     --nopdf: do not produce a PDF file from the doc, only HTML
     --help: this help

Use ReST for documentation
--------------------------

 * :ref:`ReST <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html>` is standardized.
   epydoc is not. trac wiki-markup is not.
   This means that ReST can be cut-and-pasted between epydoc, code, other
   docs, and TRAC.  This is a huge win!
 * ReST is extensible: we can write our own roles and directives to automatically link to WIKI, for example.
 * ReST has figure and table directives, and can be converted (using a standard tool) to latex documents.
 * No text documentation has good support for math rendering, but ReST is closest: it has three renderer-specific solutions (render latex, use latex to build images for html, use itex2mml to generate MathML)


How to link to class/function documentations
--------------------------------------------

Link to the generated doc of a function this way::

    :func:`perform`

For example::

    of the :func:`perform` function.

Link to the generated doc of a class this way::

    :class:`RopLop_checker`

For example::

    The class :class:`RopLop_checker`, give the functions


However, if the link target is ambiguous, Sphinx will generate warning or errors.


How to add TODO comments in Sphinx documentation
-------------------------------------------------

To include a TODO comment in Sphinx documentation, use an indented block as
follows::

    .. TODO: This is a comment.
    .. You have to put .. at the beginning of every line :(
    .. These lines should all be indented.

It will not appear in the output generated.

    .. TODO: Check it out, this won't appear.
    .. Nor will this.


How documentation is built on deeplearning.net
----------------------------------------------

The server that hosts the theano documentation runs a cron job roughly every
2 hours that fetches a fresh Theano install (clone, not just pull) and
executes the docgen.py script. It then over-writes the previous docs with the
newly generated ones. 

Note that the server will most definitely use a different version of sphinx
than yours so formatting could be slightly off, or even wrong. If you're
getting unxpected results and/or the auto-build of the documentation seems
broken, please contact theano-dev@.

In the future, we might go back to the system of auto-refresh on push (though
that might increase the load of the server quite significantly).

pylint
---------------------------------------

pylint output is not autogenerated anymore.

Pylint documentation is generated using pylintrc file: ``Theano/doc/pylintrc``

You can see a list of all `pylint messages
<http://www.logilab.org/card/pylintfeatures>`__.


.. _metadocumentation_nightly_build:

The nightly build/tests process
---------------------------------------

The user ``lisa`` runs a cronjob on the computer ``ceylon``,  this
happens nightly. (To have the crontab executed, the ``lisa`` user must
be logged into ``ceylon``, Fred leaves a shell open for that.)

The cronjob executes the scripts
``~/nightly_build/do_nightly_build_{theano,pylearn,deeplearning}``.
These scripts perform an update of theano (and pylearn, and
DeepLearningTutorials too), and execute nosetests (in various settings).

The output is emailed automatically to the `theano-buildbot`_ mailing list.

.. _theano-buildbot: https://groups.google.com/group/theano-buildbot


TO WRITE
---------------------------------------

*There is other stuff to document here, e.g.:*

 * We also want examples of good documentation, to show people how to write ReST.

