Writing Bugzilla Documentation
******************************

The Bugzilla documentation uses reStructured Text (reST), as extended
by our documentation compilation tool, Sphinx. This document is a reST
document for demonstration purposes. To learn from it, you need to
read it in reST form.

When you build the docs, this document gets built (at least in the
HTML version) as a standalone file, although it isn’t as useful in
that form because some of the directives discussed are invisible or
change when rendered.

The Sphinx documentation gives a good introduction to reST and the
Sphinx-specific extensions. Reading that one immediately-linked page
should be enough to get started. Later, the inline markup section is
worth a read.

Bugzilla’s particular documentation conventions are as follows:


Block Directives
================

Chapter headings use the double-equals, page title headings the #, and
then the three other levels are headings within a page. Every heading
should be preceded by an anchor, with a globally-unique name with no
spaces. Now, we demonstrate the available heading levels we haven’t
used yet:


Third Level Heading
-------------------


Fourth Level Heading
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Fifth Level Heading
"""""""""""""""""""

(Although try not to use headings as deep as the 5th level.)

Make links to anchors like this: Third Level Heading. It’ll pick up
the following heading name automatically and use it as the link text.
Don’t use standard reST internal links like uniqueanchorname - they
don’t work across files.

Comments are done like this:

Other block types:

Note:

  This is just a note, for your information. Like all double-dot
  blocks, follow-on lines need to be indented.

Warning:

  This is a warning of a potential serious problem you should be aware
  of.

Use both of the above block types sparingly. Consider putting the
information in the main text, omitting it, or (if long) placing it in
a subsidiary file.

Code gets highlighted using Pygments. Choose the highlighter at the
top of each file using:

You can change the highlighter for a particular block by introducing
it like this:

   # This is some Perl code
   print "Hello";

There is a list of all available lexer names available. We currently
use "console", "perl", and "sql". "none" is also a valid value.

Use 4-space indentation, except where a different value is better so
that things line up. So normally two spaces for bulleted lists, and 3
spaces for .. blocks.


Inline Directives
=================

Warning:

  Remember that reST does not support nested inline markup. So you
  can’t have a substitution inside a link, or bold inside italics.

* A filename or a path to a filename: "/path/to/*variable-bit-of-
  path*/filename.ext"

* A command to type in the shell: **command --arguments**

* A parameter name: shutdownhtml

* A parameter value: DB

* A group name: editbugs

* A bug field name: Summary

* Any string from the UI: Administration

* A specific BMO bug: bug 201069

======================================================================

This documentation undoubtedly has bugs; if you find some, please file
them here.
