doc/developer-guide/documentation/building.en.rst

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.. include:: ../../common.defs

.. _developer-doc-building:

Building the Documentation
**************************

All documentation and related files are located in the source tree under the :ts:git:`doc`
directory. Building documentation requires enabling the build with the CMake option ``-DENABLE_DOCS=ON``
(documentation builds are disabled by default).

Additional packages required for building the documentation.

System installs
   These should be installed via your system package manager (e.g., `yum <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Yum>`__,
   `dnf <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF>`__, `apt`, `brew`, etc.):

   graphviz
      Graph visualization software (provides the ``dot`` command), used for diagrams in many places.

   java
      A Java runtime is required to run PlantUML for generating diagrams.

   python3
      Python 3 is required. The build system will use this to create a virtual environment.

   uv
      Used to manage Python dependencies. See from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/
      for installation instructions. ``curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh``, or
      or ``pip3 install uv``, or your system package manager.

Python packages
   Python dependencies are managed automatically via `uv <https://docs.astral.sh/uv/>`__
   and the :ts:git:`doc/pyproject.toml`. The build system will automatically create a virtual environment
   and install all required packages (including Sphinx, sphinx-rtd-theme, sphinxcontrib-plantuml,
   sphinx-intl for internationalization, and other dependencies) when you build the documentation.

   You do not need to manually install these packages or set up uv yourself - the CMake build
   targets handle this automatically.

Building the documentation
==========================

With CMake configured with ``-DENABLE_DOCS=ON``, building the documentation is straightforward::

    # Configure the build (only needed once, or when changing options)
    cmake -B build -DENABLE_DOCS=ON

    # Build HTML documentation
    cmake --build build --target generate_docs

    # Build PDF documentation (Letter paper size)
    cmake --build build --target generate_pdf

    # Build PDF documentation (A4 paper size)
    cmake --build build --target generate_pdf_a4

The build system will automatically:

1. Create a virtual environment in the build directory via uv
2. Install all required Python packages from :ts:git:`doc/pyproject.toml`
3. Generate the documentation

For repeated builds while working on the documentation, simply run the build command again.
The build system will detect what needs to be regenerated. To force a complete rebuild,
you can remove the build directory and reconfigure.

.. note::

   It is expected that any PR updating the documentation builds without any errors *or warnings*.
   This can be easy to miss if the full build is not done before submitting the pull request.

To view the built documentation, you may point any browser to the directory
``doc/docbuild/html/``. If you are building the documentation on your local
machine, you may access the HTML documentation files directly without the need
for a full-fledged web server, as all necessary resources (CSS, Javascript, and
images) are referenced using relative paths and there are no server-side scripts
necessary to render the documentation.