Document Conventions

Updated: 11/3/2015

This document is oriented at users and developers who want to write documents for Kubernetes.

Table of Contents

• Document Conventions
  • General Concepts
  • How to Get a Table of Contents
  • How to Write Links
  • How to Include an Example
  • Misc.
    • Code formatting
    • Syntax Highlighting
    • Headings
  • What Are Mungers?
  • Auto-added Mungers
    • Unversioned Warning
    • Is Versioned
    • Generate Analytics
• Generated documentation

General Concepts

Each document needs to be munged to ensure its format is correct, links are valid, etc. To munge a document, simply run hack/update-munge-docs.sh. We verify that all documents have been munged using hack/verify-munge-docs.sh. The scripts for munging documents are called mungers, see the mungers section below if you're curious about how mungers are implemented or if you want to write one.

How to Get a Table of Contents

Instead of writing table of contents by hand, insert the following code in your md file:

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: GENERATED_TOC -->
<!-- END MUNGE: GENERATED_TOC -->

After running hack/update-munge-docs.sh, you'll see a table of contents generated for you, layered based on the headings.

How to Write Links

It's important to follow the rules when writing links. It helps us correctly versionize documents for each release.

Use inline links instead of urls at all times. When you add internal links to docs/ or examples/, use relative links; otherwise, use http://releases.k8s.io/release-1.3/<path/to/link>. For example, avoid using:

[GCE](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/getting-started-guides/gce.md)  # note that it's under docs/
[Kubernetes package](../../pkg/)                                                                # note that it's under pkg/
http://kubernetes.io/                                                                           # external link

Instead, use:

[GCE](../getting-started-guides/gce.md)                 # note that it's under docs/
[Kubernetes package](http://releases.k8s.io/release-1.3/pkg/)  # note that it's under pkg/
[Kubernetes](http://kubernetes.io/)                     # external link

The above example generates the following links: GCE, Kubernetes package, and Kubernetes.

How to Include an Example

While writing examples, you may want to show the content of certain example files (e.g. pod.yaml). In this case, insert the following code in the md file:

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: EXAMPLE path/to/file -->
<!-- END MUNGE: EXAMPLE path/to/file -->

Note that you should replace path/to/file with the relative path to the example file. Then hack/update-munge-docs.sh will generate a code block with the content of the specified file, and a link to download it. This way, you save the time to do the copy-and-paste; what's better, the content won't become out-of-date every time you update the example file.

For example, the following:

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: EXAMPLE ../user-guide/pod.yaml -->
<!-- END MUNGE: EXAMPLE ../user-guide/pod.yaml -->

generates the following after hack/update-munge-docs.sh:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80

Download example

Misc.

Code formatting

Wrap a span of code with single backticks (`). To format multiple lines of code as its own code block, use triple backticks (```).

Syntax Highlighting

Adding syntax highlighting to code blocks improves readability. To do so, in your fenced block, add an optional language identifier. Some useful identifier includes yaml, console (for console output), and sh (for shell quote format). Note that in a console output, put $ at the beginning of each command and put nothing at the beginning of the output. Here's an example of console code block:

```console

$ kubectl create -f docs/user-guide/pod.yaml
pod "foo" created

```　

which renders as:

$ kubectl create -f docs/user-guide/pod.yaml
pod "foo" created

Headings

Add a single # before the document title to create a title heading, and add ## to the next level of section title, and so on. Note that the number of # will determine the size of the heading.

What Are Mungers?

Mungers are like gofmt for md docs which we use to format documents. To use it, simply place

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: xxxx -->
<!-- END MUNGE: xxxx -->

in your md files. Note that xxxx is the placeholder for a specific munger. Appropriate content will be generated and inserted between two brackets after you run hack/update-munge-docs.sh. See munger document for more details.

Auto-added Mungers

After running hack/update-munge-docs.sh, you may see some code / mungers in your md file that are auto-added. You don't have to add them manually. It's recommended to just read this section as a reference instead of messing up with the following mungers.

Unversioned Warning

UNVERSIONED_WARNING munger inserts unversioned warning which warns the users when they're reading the document from HEAD and informs them where to find the corresponding document for a specific release.

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: UNVERSIONED_WARNING -->


<!-- END MUNGE: UNVERSIONED_WARNING -->

Is Versioned

IS_VERSIONED munger inserts IS_VERSIONED tag in documents in each release, which stops UNVERSIONED_WARNING munger from inserting warning messages.

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: IS_VERSIONED -->
<!-- TAG IS_VERSIONED -->
<!-- END MUNGE: IS_VERSIONED -->

Generate Analytics

ANALYTICS munger inserts a Google Anaylytics link for this page.

<!-- BEGIN MUNGE: GENERATED_ANALYTICS -->
<!-- END MUNGE: GENERATED_ANALYTICS -->

Generated documentation

Some documents can be generated automatically. Run hack/generate-docs.sh to populate your repository with these generated documents, and a list of the files it generates is placed in .generated_docs. To reduce merge conflicts, we do not want to check these documents in; however, to make the link checker in the munger happy, we check in a placeholder. hack/update-generated-docs.sh puts a placeholder in the location where each generated document would go, and hack/verify-generated-docs.sh verifies that the placeholder is in place.