autodoc

autodoc is a simple CI system optimized for document creation.

In general, any file-sharing solution -- preferably on top of docker-compose -- can be made into an automatic document distribution system by adding an autodoc instance.

Quick Start Guide using Docker

The autodoc image available on Docker Hub is based on pandocker providing Ubuntu's TeXlive LaTeX and pandoc in a simple box.

1. Install Docker CE

2. Clone or download the autodoc repository, open a terminal inside the example_docs directory

3. Deploy an autodoc container:

   docker run --rm -it \
    --volume "${PWD}":/docs \
    --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
    ldericher/autodoc
   

   The contents of the directory are now being watched by autodoc!

   When deploying an autodoc container, just mount your document root to /docs. You should also set the container's UID and GID. These are seen above.

4. Edit some stuff, save -- and watch the magic happen (and the terminal output).

   On each file change, autodoc searches relevant build instruction files (Makefiles etc.) and kicks off build processes accordingly.

How not to use autodoc

autodoc is not a solution for Continuous Integration of large scale systems software! autodoc excels at building a large number of independent, small files.

Deploying without Docker

autodoc only hard-depends on inotifywait from inotify-tools to recursively watch Linux file system directories.

You will usually want to install a LaTeX distribution and setup pandoc.

Prime use case: Nextcloud

Nextcloud is a "safe home for all your data" that can easily be deployed using docker-compose.
Add an autodoc container to create directories where PDFs are automatically held up to date for all your documents. This extends upon the "Base version - apache" of the Nextcloud compose deployment.

version: '2'

volumes:
  documents:

services:
  app:
    volumes:
      - documents:/opt/autodoc

  autodoc:
    restart: always
    image: ldericher/autodoc
    user: "UID:GID"
    volumes:
      - documents:/docs

The "user" key should be set to the same numeric IDs used for the nextcloud worker processes! To find the right IDs, issue docker-compose exec app sh -c 'id -u www-data; id -g www-data'.
For the apache containers, this should evaluate to "33:33".

To begin, add the mounted /opt/autodoc as a 'local type' external storage to your Nextcloud instance.
You might need to setup the permissions on your new volume using docker-compose exec app chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/autodoc.

Concept: Source patterns

To avoid unnecessary rebuilds and self-triggering, autodoc uses "source patterns" to filter for the relevant build instructions.
A source pattern is a bash regular expression matching any filename that should be regarded as a "source file" to the build instruction file.

For instance, if a Makefile instructs how to build from Markdown source files, that Makefile's source pattern should likely be \.md$.

Creating an automated build

In general, just put your source files into any (sub-)directory watched by autodoc. Add a build instruction file.

On each file change, its containing directory is searched for a build instruction file. Watched parent directories are also probed for further build instructions.
Every relevant instruction file will be executed as found.

You may combine build instruction systems to your liking.

Build instruction systems

GNU Make (Makefiles)

autodoc supports GNU Makefiles.
However, Makefiles must contain a SRCPAT annotation comment as follows, where <regex> is a source pattern as above.

#@SRCPAT <regex>

If there are multiple SRCPAT annotations, the lowermost one will be used.

You may add a PHONY target "autodoc" which will be built instead of the default target.

.PHONY: autodoc
autodoc:
  @echo "Hello World!"