This is the manual for the Flying Circus. It explains how the platform works and how to run applications.

The rendered HTML is hosted on https://doc.flyingcircus.io which is usually built from the default branch of this repo.

• Documentation generator Sphinx
• Markup languange/Sphinx extension MyST Markdown
• Translation utility sphinx-doc/sphinx-intl
• Read the Docs Sphinx theme sphinx-rtd-theme

• Build full documentation locally with pinned nixpkgs: nix-build

  • Building with pinned nixpkgs may take some time and download a lot of stuff if you don't already have the needed packages installed and your local channel differs greatly from the pinned version.
  • or: build with nixpkgs flake: nix-build --arg pkgs 'import (builtins.getFlake "nixpkgs") {}'
  • or: build with local nixpkgs from NIX_PATH: nix-build --arg pkgs 'import <nixpkgs> {}'
  • At least nixpkgs version 22.11 is required.

• Start Nix development environment which has the tools needed to build the documentation and do other maintenance tasks like regenerating the translation files: nix-shell. The following commands will work in this env:

  • Update POT/PO files from source: make update-translations

  • Build english (source language) documentation: make html

  • Build translated documentation in German: make html-de

  • Check all links (slow!): sphinx-build src _build -b linkcheck

  • Show contents of the objects inventory: python -m sphinx.ext.intersphinx https://doc.flyingcircus.io/platform/objects.inv

  • Update nixpkgs version: change URL in default.nix for the pkgs argument, right at the top.

We need to link to platform/role docs which are version-specific and live in the flyingcircusio/fc-nixos repository under doc. The current default version of the platform/role docs is configured in src/conf.py as platform-current. When building locally, the object inventory file (objects.inv) is pulled from the URL specified there.

To link from this repo here to the platform/role docs, use {external+platform-current:ref} like:

Refer to the {external+platform-current:ref}`nixos-postgresql-server` role documentation.

Available symbols can be checked with, for example:

python -m sphinx.ext.intersphinx https://doc.flyingcircus.io/roles/fc-21.11-production/objects.inv`

For now, only one file, the data protection rules, is translated to German. The rendered German version can be found here:

https://doc.flyingcircus.io/platform/de/reference/security/data-protection.html

After changes to this file, make update-translations should be run.

Note that there is currently a bug in MyST which incorrectly renders footnote references in translated strings. If you need footnotes + translation in a file, just keep it as RestructuredText with the ending .rst.

Bug report:

executablebooks/MyST-Parser#445