Developing Documentation

This document covers the tools used by the @chef-docs team for developing documentation.

GitHub

If you do not already have one, set up your GitHub account.

Download and install Git onto your computer from git-scm.com

After you have Git setup, create a directory for your repositories. Some name this directory code or repos. Use whatever name makes sense for you.

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS. Install Homebrew with the command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

brew tap go-swagger/go-swagger chef/okta-aws && brew install go-swagger okta-aws hugo node go jq direnv readline openssl@1.1 gh vale vagrant virtualbox coreutils gnutls

This command installs

go-swagger
okta-aws
Hugo
Node.js
Go
JQ
go-swagger
direnv
readline
openssl@1.1
gh
vale
vagrant
virtualbox

Chocolatey

Install Chocolatey

choco install choco install hugo-extended nodejs golang jq  gh

Install Docker Desktop Install go-swagger

Download the Docker image: docker pull quay.io/goswagger/swagger
Run with: docker run --rm -it --env GOPATH=/go -v %CD%:/go/src -w /go/src quay.io/goswagger/swagger

Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

Microsoft’s VSCode is a free and open source editor. VSCode offers many extensions–including a Chef extension–that provide useful language and documentation support.

Install VSCode

Learn a bit about VSCode through Microsoft Learn Videos and tutorials.

Setup Guide: Visual Studio Code on macOS
Setup Guide: Visual Studio Code on Windows
User Interface
Integrated Terminal
Getting started with Visual Studio Code Videos
Working with GitHub in VS Code
Introduction to GitHub in Visual Studio Code

Install the extensions:

Docs Authoring Pack (includes Code Street Spell and Markdownlint, adds some automatic configuration.)
Code Street Spell
Markdownlint
Vale
Better TOML
YAML
GitHub Pull Requests and Issues
Chef Extension for Visual Studio Code
LiveShare

Code Spell Checker

Clone the Chef Dictionary into your repository directory

gh repo clone chef/chef_dictionary

Navigate to your VSCode settings by selecting the gear icon at the bottom left side of the VSCode screen and find the Code Spell settings. Open the setting for “C Spell Dictionaries” and add the following content, adjusting the path for your local workstation

  "cSpell.dictionaryDefinitions": [
  { "name": "chef_dictionary",
    "path": "/Users/<username>/<repodir>/chef_dictionary/chef_dictionary/chef.txt"}
  ],
  "cSpell.dictionaries": [
    "chef_dictionary"
  ],

Add this configuration to exclude code blocks from spellcheck:

  "cSpell.languageSettings": [
    {  // use with Markdown files
      "languageId": "markdown",
      // Exclude code blocks from spellcheck.
      "ignoreRegExpList": [
          "/^\\s*```[\\s\\S]*?^\\s*```/gm"
      ]
    }
  ]

Markdownlint

Markdownlint-CLI2 is a fast, flexible, configuration-based command-line interface for linting Markdown files.

Install the Markdownlint CLI into your local environment:

npm install markdownlint-cli2 --global

chef/chef-web-docs/.markdownlint.yaml is the configuration file with the Markdown rules for Chef documentation files.

This is a full list of Markdownlint rules

To enable or disable rules for specific lines, add the appropriate marker:

Disable all rules: 
Enable all rules: 
Disable all rules for the next line only: 
Disable one or more rules by name: 
Enable one or more rules by name: 
Disable one or more rules by name for the next line only: 
Capture the current rule configuration: 
Restore the captured rule configuration:

To enable or disable rules for entire files, use:

Disable all rules: 
Enable all rules: 
Disable one or more rules by name: 
Enable one or more rules by name:

For more information about customizing Markdownlint, see the Markdownlint GitHub Repository README.

Vale

# Example Vale config file (`.vale.ini` or `_vale.ini`)

# Core settings
StylesPath = /Users/kimberlygarmoe/repos/styles

# The minimum alert level to display (suggestion, warning, or error).
#
# CI builds will only fail on error-level alerts.
MinAlertLevel = warning

# By default, `code` and `tt` are ignored.
IgnoredScopes = code, tt, script

# SkippedScopes specifies block-level HTML tags to ignore. Any content in these scopes will be ignored.
SkippedScopes = script, style, pre, figure

# WordTemplate specifies what Vale will consider to be an individual word.
WordTemplate = `\b(?:%s)\b`

# BlockIgnores allow you to exclude certain block-level sections of text that don't have an associated HTML tag that could be used with SkippedScopes. See Non-Standard Markup for more information.
# BlockIgnores = (?s) *({< file [^>]* >}.*?{</ ?file >})
# Ignore code fences
BlockIgnores = (((\x60{3}){1,1})([\s\S]*?)((\x60{3}){1,1}))

# TokenIgnores allow you to exclude certain inline-level sections of text that don't have an associated HTML tag that could be used with IgnoredScopes. See Non-Standard Markup for more information.
# TokenIgnores = (\$+[^\n$]+\$+)
# Ignore SVG markup
TokenIgnores = (\*\*\{\w*\}\*\*)

# The "formats" section allows you to associate an "unknown" format
# with one of Vale's supported formats.
[formats]
mdx = md
proto = md

# Global settings (applied to every syntax)
[*]

Vocab = chef_dictionary
# List of styles to load
BasedOnStyles = write-good, vale-chef
# Chef, Microsoft
# Style.Rule = {YES, NO} to enable or disable a specific rule
write-good.Editorializing = YES
# Microsoft.Contractions = NO
# You can also change the level associated with a rule
write-good.Hedging = warning

# Syntax-specific settings
# These overwrite any conflicting global settings
[*.{md,txt}]

Download the Chef Repositories

Clone the following repositories:

Product	GitHub Docs Directory
Chef Automate	[https://github.com/chef/automate
Chef Habitat	https://github.com/habitat-sh/habitat
Chef Infra Client	https://github.com/chef/chef-web-docs
Chef Infra Server	https://github.com/chef/chef-server
Chef Inspec	https://github.com/inspec/inspec

For example, you can clone a repo using the GitHub CLI with the command gh repo clone chef/chef-web-docs.