Documentation is published on https://docs.nextcloud.com.
The documentation Wiki is available for tips, tricks, edge cases, and anyone who wants to contribute more easily, without having to learn Git and Sphinx.
See the Style Guide for formatting and style conventions.
This repository hosts three manuals:
- Users' Manual
- Administration Manual
- Developers Manual
Please work in the appropriate branch: stable-branches are for the respective release (e.g. 12.0 or 13.0), master is version 14.0.
Please wrap lines at 80 characters.
Note
configuration_server/config_sample_php_parameters.rst is auto-generated from the core
config.sample.php file; changes to this file must be made in core https://github.com/nextcloud/server/tree/master/config
As this grows it may be moved to its own page.
- Nextcloud App Store
- synchronize
- Web (Web page, Web site)
All documentation in this repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0).
Source files are written using the Sphinx Documentation Generator. The syntax follows the reStructuredText style, and can also be edited from GitHub.
Contributing to the documentation requires a Github account. Make sure you are working in the correct branch for your version of Nextcloud or client apps. If your edits pertain to multiple manual versions, be prepared to backport as needed.
To edit a document, you can edit the .rst files on your local system, or work directly on Github. The latter is only suitable for small fixes and improvements because substantial editing efforts can better be controlled on your local PC.
The best way is to install a complete Sphinx build environment and work on your local PC. You will be able to make your own local builds, which is the fastest and best way to preview for errors. Sphinx will report syntax errors, missing images, and formatting errors. The Github preview is not complete and misses many mistakes. Create a new branch against the master or stable branch you are editing, make your edits, then push your new branch to Github and open a new PR.
To edit on Github, fork the repository (see top-right of the screen, under your username). You will then be able to make changes easily. Once done, you can create a pull request and get the changes reviewed and back into the official repository.
First, make sure that the following are installed:
- Python 2 (2.6.0 or better, Python 3 is not yet supported!)
- Python Image Library (PIL) - (the package is called something like
python-pillow) - Sphinx (e.g.
sudo yum install python-sphinx), on Mac:sudo easy_install Sphinx - Sphinx PHPDomain (e.g.
sudo easy_install sphinxcontrib-phpdomain) - rst2pdf (e.g.
sudo easy_install rst2pdf)
...then enter any manual directory, then run make html. The result can
be found in the _build/html subdirectory. PDFs can be built with the
make latexpdf command and are found in _build/latex/ directory.
- sudo zypper in python-Sphinx
- sudo zypper in python-rst2pdf
- sudo zypper in python-sphinxcontrib-phpdomain # requires repository "devel:languages:python"
- sudo zypper in pdfjam # pull in latexpdf and all of texlive
- sudo zypper in texlive-threeparttable
- sudo zypper in texlive-wrapfig
- sudo zypper in texlive-multirow
- make user-manual-pdf
- okular user_manual/_build/latex/NextcloudUserManual.pdf
- sudo apt-get install python-pil
- sudo apt-get install python-sphinx
- sudo apt-get install python-sphinxcontrib.phpdomain
- sudo apt-get install rst2pdf
- sudo apt-get install texlive-fonts-recommended
- sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra
- sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended
- sudo apt-get install latexmk
- make user-manual-pdf
- evince user_manual/_build/latex/NextcloudUserManual.pdf
- sudo pacman -S python2-sphinx
- sudo pacman -S extra/texlive-core
- sudo pacman -S texlive-latexextra
- sudo pip2 install rst2pdf sphinxcontrib-phpdomain
- sudo ln -s /usr/bin/sphinx-build2 /usr/bin/sphinx-build
- make user-manual-pdf
- PDFVIEWER user_manual/_build/latex/NextcloudUserManual.pdf
Running setup.cmd will install Python 2.7 and install all dependencies.
Enter any manual and clicking the "Build HTML" shortcut will create a HTML
build. Likewise, "Build PDF" will build the PDF using the more lightweight,
but feature-incomplete RST2PDF tool. The results are in _build/html and
_build/pdf respectively.
Sometimes, existing documentation might be in Word or LibreOffice documents. To make it part of this documentation collection, follow these steps:
- Install Python 2.x
- Install odt2sphinx (
easy_install odt2sphinx) - Install GCC/clang (Xcode command line tools required on Mac OS)
doc/docxfiles need to be stored as odt first- Run
odt2sphinx my.docx - Move the resulting
rstfiles in place and reference them - Wrap text lines at 80 chars, apply markup fixes