Welcome to the &os; Documentation Project (FDP). Quality documentation is crucial to the success of &os;, and we value your contributions very highly. This document describes how the FDP is organized, how to write and submit documentation, and how to effectively use the available tools. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the FDP. Willingness to contribute is the only membership requirement. This primer shows how to: Identify which parts of &os; are maintained by the FDP. Install the required documentation tools and files. Make changes to the documentation. Submit changes back for review and inclusion in the &os; documentation. Some preparatory steps must be taken before editing the &os; documentation. First, subscribe to the &a.doc;. Some team members also interact on the #bsddocs IRC channel on EFnet. These people can help with questions or problems involving the documentation. Install the textproc/docproj meta-package and Subversion. This meta-package installs all of the software needed to edit and build &os; documentation. The Subversion package is needed to obtain a working copy of the documentation and generate patches with. &prompt.root; pkg install docproj subversion Install a local working copy of the documentation from the &os; repository in ~/doc (see ). &prompt.user; svn checkout https://svn.FreeBSD.org/doc/head ~/doc Configure the text editor: Word wrap set to 70 characters. Tab stops set to 2. Replace each group of 8 leading spaces with a single tab. Specific editor configurations are listed in . Update the local working copy: &prompt.user; svn up ~/doc Edit the documentation files that require changes. If a file needs major changes, consult the mailing list for input. References to tag and entity usage can be found in and . After editing, check for problems by running: &prompt.user; igor -R filename.xml | less -RS Review the output and edit the file to fix any problems shown, then rerun the command to find any remaining problems. Repeat until all of the errors are resolved. Always build-test changes before submitting them. Running make in the top-level directory of the documentation being edited will generate that documentation in split HTML format. For example, to build the English version of the Handbook in HTML, run make in the en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ directory. When changes are complete and tested, generate a diff file: &prompt.user; cd ~/doc &prompt.user; svn diff > bsdinstall.diff.txt Give the diff file a descriptive name. In the example above, changes have been made to the bsdinstall portion of the Handbook. Submit the diff file using the web-based Problem Report system. If using the web form, enter a Summary of [patch] short description of problem. Select the Component Documentation. In the Description field, enter a short description of the changes and any important details about them. Use the [ Add an attachment ] button to attach the diff file. Finally, use the [ Submit Bug ] button to submit your diff to the problem report system. The FDP is responsible for four categories of &os; documentation. Handbook: The Handbook is the comprehensive online resource and reference for &os; users. FAQ: The FAQ uses a short question and answer format to address questions that are frequently asked on the various mailing lists and forums devoted to &os;. This format does not permit long and comprehensive answers. Manual pages: The English language system manual pages are usually not written by the FDP, as they are part of the base system. However, the FDP can reword parts of existing manual pages to make them clearer or to correct inaccuracies. Web site: This is the main &os; presence on the web, visible at https://www.FreeBSD.org/ and many mirrors around the world. The web site is typically a new user's first exposure to &os;. Translation teams are responsible for translating the Handbook and web site into different languages. Manual pages are not translated at present. Documentation source for the &os; web site, Handbook, and FAQ is available in the documentation repository at https://svn.FreeBSD.org/doc/. Source for manual pages is available in a separate source repository located at https://svn.FreeBSD.org/base/. Documentation commit messages are visible with svn log. Commit messages are also archived at &a.svn-doc-all.url;. Web frontends to both of these repositories are available at and . Many people have written tutorials or how-to articles about &os;. Some are stored as part of the FDP files. In other cases, the author has decided to keep the documentation separate. The FDP endeavors to provide links to as much of this external documentation as possible.