user-doc.md

User documentation

This app is part of the PCIC Data Portal, and as such its user documentation is integrated within the larger set of PDP documentation.

This app's user documentation is maintained in this repo and is copied over (from GitHub) each time the PDP documentation is built. This allows the user documentation to be maintained in lockstep with code updates in this repo.

Note: The PDP is a Python project; therefore its documentation is coded in rST (reStructuredText); therefore the documentation for this portal must also be coded in rST. This is a bit foreign to a JS project, but it gives an excellent result.

All user documentation is contained in the directory ./docs/user in this repo. Briefly, that directory contains one or more rST files, any accompanying images or other supporting files, and a manifest (manifest.yaml) that tells PDP what files to copy. For more details, see the README on this topic in the PDP repo.

The procedure for updating the documentation for this portal is:

1. Update documentation files in user-doc.
2. Update user-doc/manifest.yaml if necessary.
3. Merge the branch/PR on which these changes are made.
4. When a new release of this portal is deployed, also do the following: In the PDP repo, create a new release and deploy it. This causes the PDP documentation to be rebuilt, which will include changes to this portal's documentation.