The docs directory contains the sphinx source text for BentoML docs, visit http://docs.bentoml.com/ to read the full documentation.

This guide is made for anyone who's interested in running BentoML documentation locally, making changes to it and make contributions. BentoML is made by the thriving community behind it, and you're always welcome to make contributions to the project and the documentation.

Before starting to make a contribution to the docs, make sure to check the issues page and the #bentoml-contributors channel in the community slack, to make sure no one else is working on the same thing and to get feedback from the community for larger proposals.

If you haven't already, clone the BentoML Github repo to a local directory:

git clone https://github.com/bentoml/BentoML.git && cd BentoML

Note: Make sure to have PDM installed.

Install all dependencies required for building docs (mainly sphinx and its extension):

pdm install -dG docs

Build the sphinx docs:

make clean html -C ./docs

The docs HTML files are now generated under docs/build/html directory, you can preview it locally with the following command:

python -m http.server 8000 -d docs/build/html

And open your browser at http://0.0.0.0:8000/ to view the generated docs.

Install spellchecker dependencies:

make install-spellchecker-deps

To run spellchecker locally:

make spellcheck-doc

We recommend using sphinx-autobuild during development, which provides a live-reloading server, that rebuilds the documentation and refreshes any open pages automatically when changes are saved. This enables a much shorter feedback loop which can help boost productivity when writing documentation.

Simply run the following command from BentoML project's root directory:

sphinx-autobuild docs/source docs/build/html

If you have make installed, you may also run:

make watch-docs

BentoML docs is built with Sphinx, which natively supports ReStructuredText.

In reStructuredText, there are no heading levels assigned to certain characters as the structure is determined from the succession of headings. However in BentoML docs, we follow the following convention:

==============
Document Title
==============

Top Level Headings
------------------

2nd level headings
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3rd level headings
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

4th level heading - avoid this if possible
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

When writing documentation, it is common to mention or link to other parts of the docs.

If you need to refer to a specific documentation page, use :doc: plus path to the target documentation file under the docs/source/. e.g.:

:doc:`tutorial`
:doc:`/frameworks/pytorch`

By default, this will show the title of the target document and link to it. You may also change the title shown on current page:

:doc:`📖 Main Concepts <concepts/index>`

It is also possible to refer to a specific section of other document pages. We use the autosectionlabel sphinx plugin to generate labels for every section in the documentation.

For example:

:ref:`frameworks/pytorch:Section Title

A note section can be created with the following syntax:

.. note:: This is what the most basic admonitions look like.


.. note::
   It is *possible* to have multiple paragraphs in the same admonition.

   If you really want, you can even have lists, or code, or tables.

There are other admonition types such as caution, danger, hint, important, seealso, and tip. Learn more about it here.

Code blocks in reStructuredText can be created in various ways::

    Indenting content by 4 spaces, after a line ends with "::".
    This will have default syntax highlighting (highlighting a few words and "strings").

.. code::

    You can also use the code directive, or an alias: code-block, sourcecode.
    This will have default syntax highlighting (highlighting a few words and "strings").

.. code:: python

    print("And with the directive syntax, you can have syntax highlighting.")

.. code:: none

    print("Or disable all syntax highlighting.")

There's a lot more forms of "blocks" in reStructuredText that can be used, as seen in https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#literal-blocks.

For most scenarios in BentoML docs, use the tabs view provided by sphinx-design: https://sphinx-design.readthedocs.io/en/furo-theme/tabs.html

.. tab-set::

    .. tab-item:: Label1

        Content 1

    .. tab-item:: Label2

        Content 2

BentoML docs relies heavily on the Python docstrings defined together with the source code. We ask our contributors to document every public facing APIs and CLIs, including their signatures, options, and example usage. Sphinx can then use these inline docs to generate API References pages.

BentoML uses the sphinx.ext.autodoc extension to include documentation from docstring. For example, a .rst document can create a section made from a Python Class's docstring, using the following syntax:

.. autoclass:: bentoml.Service
    :members: api

Similarly, for functions:

.. autofunction:: bentoml.models.list

Learn more about this syntax here.

BentoML codebase follows the Google's docstring style for writing inline docstring. Below are some examples.

Arguments should be defined with Args: prefix, followed by a line with indentation. Each argument should be followed by its type, a new indentation for description of given field. Each argument should follow the below definition:

    Args:
        bento_name (:code:`str`):
            :class:`~bentoml.BentoService` identifier with name format :obj:`NAME:VERSION`.
            ``NAME`` can be accessed via :meth:`~bentoml.BentoService.name` and ``VERSION`` can
            be accessed via :meth:`~bentoml.BentoService.version`

For optional arguments, follow the following syntax. For example a function func() with following signature:

def func(x: str=None, a: Optional[bool]=None):
    ...

then documentation should look like:

    Args:
        x (:code:`str`, `optional`):
            Description of x ...
        a (`bool`, `optional`):
            Description of a ...

Make sure to define something like:

Example::

    # example code here
    # ...

The Example can be replaced with any word of choice as long as there are two semicolons following. Read more about doctest

If a function returns value, returns should be defined with Returns:, followed by a line with indentation. The first line should be the type of the return, followed by a line return. An example for a return statement:

    Returns:
        :obj:`Dict[str,str]` with keys are :class:`~bentoml.BentoService` nametag following with saved bundle path.