Introduction


Figure 1

Decorative Undraw.co image of three documents

Types of Software Documentation


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Undraw.co image of a developerUndraw.co image of a user


Documentation Better Practices


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Getty Images - a image displaying a cartoon rendition of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Documentation in Practice


Documentation Tools


Figure 1

Spyder IDE docstring settings - dropdown includes different types of docstrings; NumPy style is selected

Figure 2

  • Make a gh-pages branch. Either from the GUI or through command line, make a new branch named gh-pages. In the GUI, you would do this by clicking on the branches link: On the main repository page, the branches link is circled (directly to the right of the `main` branch dropdown) Then click on “New branch”: On the branches page, the "New branch" button on the top-right is circled Name it gh-pages: Create a new branch pop-up dialog with the name `gh-pages` typed into "New branch name" text box

  • Figure 3

  • Set up GitHub to build from that branch. In the GUI, go to “Settings” > “Pages”: Under the Settings tab, the Pages section is selected. Shows option for "Build and deployment" that include Source, branch, and Custom domain Change the settings to “Source: Deploy from branch”, “Branch: gh-pages”, and “directory /docs”. Then hit “Save.” GitHub Pages modified settings - Source is set to "Deploy from a branch", Branch is set to `gh-pages`, and directory is set to `/docs`