GitLab Docs in GDK

You can use the GDK to contribute GitLab documentation. The GDK can:

• Maintain a clone of the docs-gitlab-com repository for work on changes to that project.
• Preview changes made in the GDK-managed gitlab/doc directory.

If you want to contribute to GitLab documentation without using GDK, see Set up local development and preview.

Configure GitLab Docs in GDK

GDK provides several configuration options.

Enable GitLab Docs previews

To enable previewing GitLab documentation by using the docs-gitlab-com project:

1. Enable the docs-gitlab-com integration:

   gdk config set docs_gitlab_com.enabled true

2. Reconfigure GDK:

   gdk reconfigure

Disable GitLab Docs previews

To disable previewing GitLab documentation by using the docs-gitlab-com project:

1. Disable the docs-gitlab-com integration:

   gdk config set docs_gitlab_com.enabled false

2. Reconfigure GDK:

   gdk reconfigure

Disable automatic updates

To avoid automatically updating the docs-gitlab-com checkout, run:

gdk config set docs_gitlab_com.auto_update false

Configure a custom port

The default port is 1313 but this can be customized:

gdk config set docs_gitlab_com.port 1314

Configure HTTPS

You can run the GitLab Docs site using HTTPS. For more information, see NGINX.

Include more documentation

The full published documentation suite includes additional documentation from outside the gitlab project.

To make and preview changes to the additional documentation:

1. Run the following commands as required:

   gdk config set gitlab_runner.enabled true
   gdk config set omnibus_gitlab.enabled true
   gdk config set charts_gitlab.enabled true
   gdk config set gitlab_operator.enabled true

2. Run gdk update to:

   • Clone the additional projects for the first time, or update existing local copies.
   • Compile a published version of the additional documentation.

3. Start the docs-gitlab-com service if not already running:

   gdk start docs-gitlab-com

By default, the cloned repositories of the gitlab_runner, omnibus_gitlab, charts_gitlab, and gitlab_operator components are:

• Updated automatically when you run gdk update. To disable this, set auto_update: false against whichever project to disable.

• Cloned using HTTPS. If you originally cloned gitlab using SSH, you might want to set these cloned repositories to SSH also. To set these repositories to SSH:

  1. Go into each cloned repository and run git remote -v to review the current settings.

  2. To switch to SSH, run git remote set-url <remote name> git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/<project path>.git. For example, to update your HTTPS-cloned gitlab-runner repository (with a remote called origin), run:

     cd <GDK root path>/gitlab-runner
     git remote set-url origin git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab-runner.git

  3. Run git remote -v in each cloned repository to verify that you have successfully made the change from HTTPS to SSH.

Make and preview documentation changes

You can preview documentation changes as they would appear when published on GitLab Docs.

To make changes to GitLab documentation and preview them:

1. Start the docs-gitlab-com service and ensure you can preview the documentation site:

   gdk start docs-gitlab-com

2. Make the necessary changes to the files in <path_to_gdk>/gitlab/doc.

3. View the preview. You must restart the docs-gitlab-com service to recompile the published version of the documentation with the new changes:

   gdk restart docs-gitlab-com

   You can tail the docs-gitlab-com logs to see progress on rebuilding the documentation:

   gdk tail docs-gitlab-com

Troubleshooting

Documentation from disabled projects appears in preview

Disabling additional documentation projects doesn’t remove them from your file system and Hugo continues to use them as a source of documentation. When disabled, the projects aren’t updated so Hugo is using old commits to preview the data from those projects.

To ensure only enabled projects appear in the preview:

1. Disable any projects you don’t want previewed.
2. Remove the cloned project directory from inside your GDK directory.