GOV.UK Developer Docs

👉 https://docs.publishing.service.gov.uk

This is a static site generated with Middleman, using alphagov/tech-docs-template.

Some of the files (like the CSS, javascripts and layouts) are managed in the template and are not supposed to be modified here. Any project-specific Ruby code needs to go into /app.

Technical documentation

You can use the GOV.UK Docker environment to run the application and its tests with all the necessary dependencies. Follow the usage instructions to get started.

Use GOV.UK Docker to run any commands that follow.

Running the app

You will need to create a GitHub auth token to build the project or run the full test suite, otherwise you will find yourself rate limited. It doesn't need any permissions.

Store the token in a .env file like this:

GITHUB_TOKEN=somethingsomething

Testing the app

bundle exec rake

Updating the template

You can pull down the latest version of the Tech Docs template by running:

bin/update

Deployment

This project is hosted on GitHub Pages. It is redeployed hourly on weekdays (to pick up changes to external docs) and whenever a PR is merged.

As part of the deployment, we build a static set of pages to minimise the response time and potential issues with remote API calls.

NO_CONTRACTS=true bundle exec middleman build

This will create a bunch of static files in /build.

Licence

MIT License