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Documentation Guidelines

Zephyr Project content is written using the reStructuredText markup language (.rst file extension) with Sphinx extensions, and processed using Sphinx to create a formatted standalone website. Developers can view this content either in its raw form as .rst markup files, or (with Sphinx installed) they can build the documentation using the Makefile on Linux systems, or make.bat on Windows, to generate the HTML content. The HTML content can then be viewed using a web browser. This same .rst content is also fed into the Zephyr documentation website (with a different theme applied).

You can read details about reStructuredText and about Sphinx extensions from their respective websites.

This document provides a quick reference for commonly used reST and Sphinx-defined directives and roles used to create the documentation you’re reading.

Headings

While reST allows use of both and overline and matching underline to indicate a heading, we only use an underline indicator for headings.

  • Document title (h1) use “#” for the underline character
  • First section heading level (h2) use “*”
  • Second section heading level (h3) use “=”
  • Third section heading level (h4) use “-“

The heading underline must be at least as long as the title it’s under.

For example:

This is a title heading
#######################

some content goes here

First section heading
*********************

Content Highlighting

Some common reST inline markup samples:

  • one asterisk: *text* for emphasis (italics),
  • two asterisks: **text** for strong emphasis (boldface), and
  • two backquotes: ``text`` for inline code samples.

If asterisks or backquotes appear in running text and could be confused with inline markup delimiters, you can eliminate the confusion by adding a backslash (\) before it.

Lists

For bullet lists, place an asterisk (*) or hyphen (-) at the start of a paragraph and indent continuation lines with two spaces.

The first item in a list (or sublist) must have a blank line before it and should be indented at the same level as the preceding paragraph (and not indented itself).

For numbered lists start with a 1. or a. for example, and continue with autonumbering by using a # sign. Indent continuation lines with three spaces:

* This is a bulleted list.
* It has two items, the second
  item and has more than one line of reST text.  Additional lines
  are indented to the first character of the
  text of the bullet list.

1. This is a new numbered list. If the wasn't a blank line before it,
   it would be a continuation of the previous list (or paragraph).
#. It has two items too.

a. This is a numbered list using alphabetic list headings
#. It has three items (and uses autonumbering for the rest of the list)
#. Here's the third item

#. This is an autonumbered list (default is to use numbers starting
   with 1).

   #. This is a second-level list under the first item (also
      autonumbered).  Notice the indenting.
   #. And a second item in the nested list.
#. And a second item back in the containing list.  No blank line
   needed, but it wouldn't hurt for readability.

Definition lists (with a term and its definition) are a convenient way to document a word or phrase with an explanation. For example this reST content:

The Makefile has targets that include:

html
   Build the HTML output for the project

clean
   Remove all generated output, restoring the folders to a
   clean state.

Would be rendered as:

The Makefile has targets that include:

html
Build the HTML output for the project
clean
Remove all generated output, restoring the folders to a clean state.

Multi-column lists

If you have a long bullet list of items, where each item is short, you can indicate the list items should be rendered in multiple columns with a special hlist directive:

.. hlist::
   :columns: 3

   * A list of
   * short items
   * that should be
   * displayed
   * horizontally
   * so it doesn't
   * use up so much
   * space on
   * the page

This would be rendered as:

  • A list of
  • short items
  • that should be
  • displayed
  • horizontally
  • so it doesn’t
  • use up so much
  • space on
  • the page

Note the optional :columns: parameter (default is two columns), and all the list items are indented by three spaces.

Tables

There are a few ways to create tables, each with their limitations or quirks. Grid tables offer the most capability for defining merged rows and columns, but are hard to maintain:

+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| Header row, column 1   | Header 2   | Header 3 | Header 4 |
| (header rows optional) |            |          |          |
+========================+============+==========+==========+
| body row 1, column 1   | column 2   | column 3 | column 4 |
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| body row 2             | ...        | ...      | you can  |
+------------------------+------------+----------+ easily   +
| body row 3 with a two column span   | ...      | span     |
+------------------------+------------+----------+ rows     +
| body row 4             | ...        | ...      | too      |
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+

This example would render as:

Header row, column 1 (header rows optional) Header 2 Header 3 Header 4
body row 1, column 1 column 2 column 3 column 4
body row 2 … … you can easily span rows too
body row 3 with a two column span …
body row 4 … …

List tables are much easier to maintain, but don’t support row or column spans:

.. list-table:: Table title
   :widths: 15 20 40
   :header-rows: 1

   * - Heading 1
     - Heading 2
     - Heading 3
   * - body row 1, column 1
     - body row 1, column 2
     - body row 1, column 3
   * - body row 2, column 1
     - body row 2, column 2
     - body row 2, column 3

This example would render as:

Table title
Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3
body row 1, column 1 body row 1, column 2 body row 1, column 3
body row 2, column 1 body row 2, column 2 body row 2, column 3

File names and Commands

Sphinx extends reST by supporting additional inline markup elements (called “roles”) used to tag text with special meanings and allow style output formatting. (You can refer to the Sphinx Inline Markup documentation for the full list).

For example, there are roles for marking filenames (:file:`name`) and command names such as make (:command:`make`). You can also use the ``inline code`` markup (double backticks) to indicate a filename.

For references to files that are in the Zephyr GitHub tree, a special role can be used that creates a hyperlink to that file. For example a reference to the reST file used to create this document can be generated using :zephyr_file:\`doc/guides/documentation/index.rst\` that will show up as doc/guides/documentation/index.rst.

Internal Cross-Reference Linking

ReST links are only supported within the current file using the notation:

refer to the `internal-linking`_ page

which renders as,

refer to the internal-linking page

Note the use of a trailing underscore to indicate an outbound link. In this example, the label was added immediately before a heading, so the text that’s displayed is the heading text itself.

With Sphinx however, we can create link-references to any tagged text within the Zephyr Project documentation.

Target locations within documents are defined with a label directive:

.. _my label name:

Note the leading underscore indicating an inbound link. The content immediately following this label is the target for a :ref:`my label name` reference from anywhere within the Zephyr documentation. The label should be added immediately before a heading so there’s a natural phrase to show when referencing this label (e.g., the heading text).

This is the same directive used to define a label that’s a reference to a URL:

.. _Zephyr Wikipedia Page:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_(operating_system)

To enable easy cross-page linking within the site, each file should have a reference label before its title so it can be referenced from another file. These reference labels must be unique across the whole site, so generic names such as “samples” should be avoided. For example the top of this document’s.rst file is:

.. _doc_guidelines:

Documentation Guidelines for the Zephyr Project
###############################################

Other .rst documents can link to this document using the :ref:`doc_guidelines` tag and it will show up as Documentation Guidelines. This type of internal cross reference works across multiple files, and the link text is obtained from the document source so if the title changes, the link text will update as well.

Non-ASCII Characters

You can insert non-ASCII characters such as a Trademark symbol (™), by using the notation |trade|. Available replacement names are defined in an include file used during the Sphinx processing of the reST files. The names of these replacement characters are the same as used in HTML entities used to insert characters in HTML, e.g., ™ and are defined in the file sphinx_build/substitutions.txt as listed here:

.. |br|     raw:: html        .. force a line break in HTML output (blank lines needed here)

   <br />

.. These are replacement strings for non-ASCII characters used within the project
   using the same name as the html entity names (e.g., &copy;) for that character

.. |copy|   unicode:: U+000A9 .. COPYRIGHT SIGN
   :ltrim:
.. |trade|  unicode:: U+02122 .. TRADEMARK SIGN
   :ltrim:
.. |reg|    unicode:: U+000AE .. REGISTERED TRADEMARK SIGN
   :ltrim:
.. |deg|    unicode:: U+000B0 .. DEGREE SIGN
   :ltrim:
.. |plusminus|  unicode:: U+000B1 .. PLUS-MINUS SIGN
   :rtrim:
.. |micro|  unicode:: U+000B5 .. MICRO SIGN
   :rtrim:
.. |sup2|  unicode:: U+00B2 .. SUPERSCRIPT TWO
   :ltrim:

We’ve kept the substitutions list small but others can be added as needed by submitting a change to the substitutions.txt file.

Code and Command Examples

Use the reST code-block directive to create a highlighted block of fixed-width text, typically used for showing formatted code or console commands and output. Smart syntax highlighting is also supported (using the Pygments package). You can also directly specify the highlighting language. For example:

.. code-block:: c

   struct _k_object {
      char *name;
      u8_t perms[CONFIG_MAX_THREAD_BYTES];
      u8_t type;
      u8_t flags;
      u32_t data;
   } __packed;

Note the blank line between the code-block directive and the first line of the code-block body, and the body content is indented three spaces (to the first non-white space of the directive name).

This would be rendered as:

struct _k_object {
   char *name;
   u8_t perms[CONFIG_MAX_THREAD_BYTES];
   u8_t type;
   u8_t flags;
   u32_t data;
} __packed;

You can specify other languages for the code-block directive, including c, python, and rst, and also console, bash, or shell. If you want no syntax highlighting, use the language none, for example:

.. code-block:: none

   This would be a block of text styled with a background
   and box, but with no syntax highlighting.

Would display as:

This would be a block of text styled with a background
and box, but with no syntax highlighting.

There’s a shorthand for writing code blocks too: end the introductory paragraph with a double colon (::) and indent the code block content by three spaces. On output, only one colon will be shown. The highlighting package makes a best guess at the type of content in the block and highlighting purposes.

Images

Images are included in documentation by using an image directive:

.. image:: ../../images/doc-gen-flow.png
   :align: center
   :alt: alt text for the image

or if you’d like to add an image caption, use:

.. figure:: ../../images/doc-gen-flow.png
   :alt: image description

   Caption for the figure

The file name specified is relative to the document source file, and we recommend putting images into an images folder where the document source is found. The usual image formats handled by a web browser are supported: JPEG, PNG, GIF, and SVG. Keep the image size only as large as needed, generally at least 500 px wide but no more than 1000 px, and no more than 250 KB unless a particularly large image is needed for clarity.

Tabs, spaces, and indenting

Indenting is significant in reST file content, and using spaces is preferred. Extra indenting can (unintentionally) change the way content is rendered too. For lists and directives, indent the content text to the first non-white space in the preceding line. For example:

* List item that spans multiple lines of text
  showing where to indent the continuation line.

1. And for numbered list items, the continuation
   line should align with the text of the line above.

.. code-block::

   The text within a directive block should align with the
   first character of the directive name.

Keep the line length for documentation less than 80 characters to make it easier for reviewing in GitHub. Long lines because of URL references are an allowed exception.

zephyr-app-commands Directive

This is a Zephyr directive for generating consistent documentation of the shell commands needed to manage (build, flash, etc.) an application.

For example, to generate commands to build samples/hello_world for qemu_x86 use:

.. zephyr-app-commands::
   :zephyr-app: samples/hello_world
   :board: qemu_x86
   :goals: build

Directive options:

:tool:
which tool to use. Valid options are currently ‘cmake’, ‘west’ and ‘all’. The default is ‘cmake’.
:app:
if set, the commands will change directories to this path to the application.
:zephyr-app:
like :app:, but includes instructions from the Zephyr base directory. Cannot be given with :app:.
:generator:
which build system to generate. Valid options are currently ‘ninja’ and ‘make’. The default is ‘ninja’. This option is not case sensitive.
:host-os:
which host OS the instructions are for. Valid options are ‘unix’, ‘win’ and ‘all’. The default is ‘all’.
:board:
if set, the application build will target the given board.
:shield:
if set, the application build will target the given shield.
:conf:
if set, the application build will use the given configuration file. If multiple conf files are provided, enclose the space-separated list of files with quotes, e.g., “a.conf b.conf”.
:gen-args:
if set, additional arguments to the CMake invocation
:build-args:
if set, additional arguments to the build invocation
:build-dir:
if set, the application build directory will APPEND this (relative, Unix-separated) path to the standard build directory. This is mostly useful for distinguishing builds for one application within a single page.
:goals:
a whitespace-separated list of what to do with the app (in ‘build’, ‘flash’, ‘debug’, ‘debugserver’, ‘run’). Commands to accomplish these tasks will be generated in the right order.
:maybe-skip-config:
if set, this indicates the reader may have already created a build directory and changed there, and will tweak the text to note that doing so again is not necessary.
:compact:
if set, the generated output is a single code block with no additional comment lines

For example, the .. zephyr-app-commands listed above would render like this in the generated HTML output:

# On Linux/macOS
cd $ZEPHYR_BASE/samples/hello_world
mkdir build && cd build

# On Windows
cd %ZEPHYR_BASE%\samples\hello_world
mkdir build & cd build

# Use cmake to configure a Ninja-based build system:
cmake -GNinja -DBOARD=qemu_x86 ..

# Now run ninja on the generated build system:
ninja