DocKnot

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Murphy's Fourth Corollary

Blurb

DocKnot is a static web site generator built around a macro language called thread, with special support for managing software releases. In addition to building a web site, it can generate distribution tarballs and consistent human-readable software package documentation from a YAML metadata file and templates. The goal is to generate both web pages and distributed documentation files (such as README) from the same source, using templates for consistency across multiple packages.

Description

In 1999, I wrote a program named spin that implemented an idiosyncratic macro language called thread. It slowly expanded into a static web site generator and gained additional features to manage the journal entries, book reviews, RSS feeds, and software releases. DocKnot is the latest incarnation.

In addition to its static web site generator, DocKnot can use one metadata file as its source information and generate all the various bits of documentation for a software package. This allows me to make any changes in one place and then regenerate the web page, included documentation, and other files to incorporate those changes. It also lets me make changes to the templates to improve shared wording and push that out to every package I maintain without having to remember track those changes in each package.

DocKnot is also slowly absorbing other tools that I use for software distribution and web site maintenance, such as generating distribution tarballs for software packages.

DocKnot was designed and written for my personal needs, and I'm not sure it will be useful for anyone else. At the least, the template files are rather specific to my preferences about how to write package documentation, and the thread macro language is highly specialized for my personal web site. I'm not sure if I'll have the time to make it a more general tool. But you're certainly welcome to use it if you find it useful, send pull requests to make it more general, or take ideas from it for your own purposes.

Requirements

Perl 5.24 or later and Module::Build are required to build this module. The following additional Perl modules are required to use it:

• Date::Language (part of TimeDate)
• Date::Parse (part of TimeDate)
• File::BaseDir
• File::ShareDir
• Git::Repository
• Image::Size
• IO::Compress::Xz (part of IO-Compress-Lzma)
• IO::Uncompress::Gunzip (part of IO-Compress)
• IPC::Run
• IPC::System::Simple
• JSON::MaybeXS
• Kwalify
• List::SomeUtils 0.07 or later
• Path::Iterator::Rule
• Path::Tiny 0.101 or later
• Perl6::Slurp
• Pod::Thread 3.01 or later
• Sort::Versions
• Template (part of Template Toolkit)
• YAML::XS 0.81 or later

Download

The distribution:

An archive of older releases is also available.

DocKnot is packaged in Debian 11 (bullseye) and later as docknot. See the Debian package tracker for more information.

DocKnot is available from CPAN as the App-DocKnot distribution.

DocKnot is maintained using the Git version control system. To check out the current development tree, see GitHub or clone:

    https://git.eyrie.org/git/web/docknot.git

Pull requests on GitHub are welcome. You can also browse the current development source.

Documentation

License

The DocKnot package as a whole is covered by the following copyright and license:

Copyright 1999-2022 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Some individual source files are covered by other, compatible licenses. For complete copyright and license information, see the file LICENSE in the DocKnot source distribution.