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Metasys API Landing Page

CircleCI

The landing page for the Metasys Server API Documentation

Contributing

Pull Requests

When a pull request is submitted, CircleCI will automagically generate a full site preview which can be shown to reviewers before merging in the changes.

The preview can be accessed via the "Artifacts" tab when viewing the build in CircleCI and clicking on the site-preview/index.html file.

Previewing Locally

Prerequisites

This project depends on Ruby the language and Jekyll a static website generator.

Before attempting to preview locally you need to get your environment setup. The steps that we'll go through are

  • Install Ruby
  • Install the ruby programs bundler and jekyll
  • Setup git submodules to access the theme for this site.

Install Ruby

Install Ruby (This varies by operating system). I recommend the instructions at the Jekyll website for your operating system. I recommend installing version 3.1.3 (at the time of writing as that is what it's been tested with most lately).

Install Bundler and Jekyll

Install the programs bundler and jekyll.

gem install bundler:2.3.26 jekyll:3.9.3

Those specific versions are recommended as that's the version of Jekyll used by GitHub Pages and that's the version of the bundler used to create the Gemfile.lock file.

Setup Git Submodules

The following steps need to be done once after cloning the repo

> git submodule init
> git submodule update --remote
> bundle install --path vendor/bundle # depending on your env, you may not need path parameter

This only needs to be done once per working directory. So if for some reason you were to clone this repository a second time to another location you would need to repeat this step to setup that working directory.

Note the --path parameter. If you installed a version of ruby using a ruby version manager then you probably don't need that path as all dependencies will be installed in a non admin location. But it never hurts to include that path if you are uncertain. This just tells bundle where to install dependencies. (Some installations of Ruby store all dependencies in an admin area where you wouldn't normally have write access.)

Previewing the Site

Once the prerequisites are in place you can preview the site at any time:

> bundle exec jekyll serve

Then in your browser open http://127.0.0.1:4000/api-landing/

If you want your browser to auto-reload while you make changes to the docs use the --livereload parameter:

> bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

Notes for Previewing on Apple Silicon

These instructions work using the built-in version of ruby which ships with macOS 12 (Monterey)

> which ruby
/usr/bin/ruby
> ruby -v
ruby 2.6.8p205 (2021-07-07 revision 67951) [universal.arm64e-darwin21]
>

The bundle install step above will typically fail when trying to install the ffi dependency. At the time of writing there is no arm version of that package. The trick is to run ruby in "intel" mode and install all the intel versions of the libraries:

arch -x86_64 bundle install --path vendor/bundle

Likewise, the --livereload switch fails when running the site in arm mode. Instead issue the command in "intel" mode.

arch -x86_64 bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

Note: I did not have issues with these dependencies when using Ruby 3.1.3 which was installed using install-ruby.

Documentation on PR Preview Builds

We use Circle CI for PR Preview Builds rather than GitHub Actions. This is partially for legacy reasons (GitHub Actions didn't exist at the time this repo was created). But it's also because GitHub doesn't have the type of artifacts we want. With Circle CI we can up load the entire preview site as individual files. With GitHub Actions the pre-built site is zipped up into a single downloadable artifact—which makes it impossible to link to individual files.

Circle CI Builds are triggered every time a branch changes. But we only want the build to run as part of a PR. At the time of writing PR triggers did not exist on Circle CI. See Circle CI Triggers Overview.

Our preview build is intended to help as part of a PR, so the build exits immediately if it determines there is no PR associated with the branch.

We use a separate GitHub action that is triggered when a PR is opened or reopened. It then uses the Circle CI Pipeline Trigger API to run the build.

When the Circle CI build runs, it immediately checks the PR for any previous comments from itself. If none are found, then a new commit is added to the PR that informs users that "Circle CI Preview is being generated" and includes a link to the build. If a previous comment is found, then that commit is modified to state that a "Circle CI Preview is being generated".

When the build is completed and the artifacts are uploaded, then the job looks for it's previous commit and changes the body to say "Circle CI Preview Available" with a link to the preview site.