include attributes.txt, so that we can compile individual files

[pve-docs.git] / README.adoc

diff --git a/README.adoc b/README.adoc
index 7907228a13625450cecb50bc1de30a62a23eb819..ed031141cf3e1be4673fefb1683750383cea542e 100644 (file)
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+++ b/README.adoc
@@ -1,19 +1,56 @@
 Proxmox VE Documentation
 ========================
+include::attributes.txt[]
 
-What is this?
--------------
-
-This is an experimental project, trying to generate high quality
-documentation for http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE]. We choose to use
+We try to generate high quality documentation for
+http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE], and choose to use
 http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[AsciiDoc] as base format.
 
-One idea is to generate high quality manual pages, and assemble them
-into a complete book, called link:pve-admin-guide.adoc[Proxmox VE
+The basic idea is to generate high quality manual pages, and assemble
+them into a complete book, called link:pve-admin-guide.adoc[Proxmox VE
 Administration Guide].  So we have one source, and generate several
 documents from that. It is also possible to generate printable PDF
 files, or ebook formats ('.ebup').
 
+When possible, we provide scripts to extract API definitions,
+configuration or command line options from the source code.
+
+To simplify the documentation task, we keep all Documentation within
+this repository. It is possible to generate the docs without installing
+any additional Proxmox packages with:
+
+ make index
+
+To update the auto-generate API definitions use:
+
+ make update
+
+NOTE: you need a fully installed development environment for that.
+
+
+Debian Packages
+---------------
+
+We generate a development package called 'pve-doc-generator', which is
+used by other Proxmox VE package to generate manual pages at package
+build time.
+
+Another package called 'pve-docs' is used to publish generated
+'.html' and '.pdf' files on our web servers. You can generate
+those debian packages using:
+
+ make deb
+
+
+Common Macro definition in link:attributes.txt[]
+------------------------------------------------
+
+'asciidoc' allows us to define common macros, which can then be
+referred to using `{macro}`. We try to use this mechanism to improve
+consistency. For example, we defined a macro called `pve`, which
+expands to "Proxmox VE". The plan is to add more such definitions for
+terms which are used more than once.
+
 Autogenerated CLI Command Synopsis
 ----------------------------------