Documentation

• Content guidelines
• RST cheat sheet
• RST guidelines

This introductory guide will help you acquire the tools and knowledge you need to write documentation, whether you plan to make a minor content change or document an application from scratch.

See also

Discover other ways to contribute to Odoo

Read the introduction to the reStructuredText language if you are not familiar with it. Then, you have two courses of action to start contributing to the documentation, depending on whether you want to propose minor changes to existing content or you instead want to work on significant changes to new and existing content.

• For minor changes, for example, adding a paragraph or fixing a typo, we recommend using the GitHub interface. This is the easiest and fastest way to submit your changes, and it is suitable for non-technical people. Jump directly to the Make your first contribution section to get started.

• For more complex changes, it is necessary to use Git and work from a local copy of the documentation. Follow the instructions in the Environment setup section to first prepare your environment.

reStructuredText (RST)

The documentation is written in reStructuredText (RST), a lightweight markup language consisting of regular text augmented with markup, which allows including headings, images, notes, and so on. This might seem a bit abstract, but there is no need to worry; RST is not hard to learn, especially if you intend to make minor changes to the content.

If you need to learn about a specific markup, head over to our cheat sheet for RST; it contains all the information you should ever need for the documentation of Odoo.

Important

We kindly ask you to observe a set of content and RST guidelines as you write documentation. This ensures that you stay consistent with the rest of the documentation and facilitates the approval of your content changes as the Odoo team reviews them.

See also

• Content guidelines

• RST cheat sheet

• RST guidelines

Environment setup

The instructions below help you prepare your environment for making local changes to the documentation and then push them to GitHub. Skip this section and go to Make your first contribution if you have already completed this step or want to make changes from the GitHub interface.

1. First, you need to create a GitHub account. Odoo uses GitHub to manage the source code of its products, and this is where you will make your changes and submit them for review.

2. Generate a new SSH key and register it on your GitHub account.

3. Go to github.com/odoo/documentation and click on the Fork button in the top right corner to create a fork (your own copy) of the repository on your account. This creates a copy of the codebase to which you can make changes without affecting the main codebase. Skip this step if you work at Odoo.

4. Install Git. It is a command-line (a text interface) tool that allows tracking the history of changes made to a file and, more importantly, working on different versions of that file simultaneously. It means you do not need to worry about overwriting someone else’s pending work when making changes.

   Verify that the installation directory of Git is included in your system’s PATH variable.

   Linux and macOSWindows

   Follow the guide to update the PATH variable on Linux and macOS with the installation path of Git (by default /usr/bin/git).

5. Configure Git to identify yourself as the author of your future contributions. Enter the same email address you used to register on GitHub.

   $ git config --global user.name “Your Name”
   $ git config --global user.email “youremail@example.com”
   

6. Clone the sources with Git and navigate into the local repository.

   $ git clone git@github.com:odoo/documentation.git
   $ cd documentation
   

7. Configure Git to push changes to your fork rather than to the main codebase. In the commands below, replace <your_github_account> with the name of the GitHub account on which you created the fork. Skip this step if you work at Odoo.

   $ git remote add dev git@github.com:<your_github_account>/documentation.git
   

8. Configure Git to ease the collaboration between writers coming from different systems.

   Linux and macOSWindows

   $ git config --global core.autocrlf input
   $ git config commit.template `pwd`/commit_template.txt
   

9. Install the latest release of Python and pip on your machine.

10. Install the Python dependencies of the documentation with pip.

    $ pip install -r requirements.txt
    

    Verify that the installation directory of the Python dependencies is included in your system’s PATH variable.

    Linux and macOSWindows

    Follow the guide to update the PATH variable on Linux and macOS with the installation path of the Python dependencies (by default ~/.local/bin).

11. Install Make.

    Linux and macOSWindows

    $ sudo apt install make -y
    

12. Install pngquant.

13. That’s it! You are ready to make your first contribution with Git.

Make your first contribution

Contribute from the GitHub interfaceContribute with Git

1. Verify that you are browsing the documentation in the version that you intend to change. The version can be selected from the dropdown in the top menu.

2. Head to the page that you want to change and click on the Edit on GitHub button in the top right corner of the page.

3. Click on the Fork this repository button to create a fork (your own copy) of the repository on your account. This creates a copy of the codebase to which you can make changes without affecting the main codebase. Skip this step if you work at Odoo.

   

4. Make the desired changes while taking care of following the content and RST guidelines.

   Tip

   Click on the Preview changes button to review your contribution in a more human-readable format. Be aware that the preview is not able to handle all markups correctly. Notes and tips, for instance, are shown as plain text.

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and fill out the small form to propose your changes. In the first text box, write a very short summary of your changes. For instance, “Fix a typo” or “Add documentation for invoicing of sales orders.” In the second text box, explain why you are proposing these changes. Then, click on the Propose changes button.

   

6. Review your changes and click on the Create pull request button.

7. Tick the Allow edits from maintainer checkbox. Skip this step if you work at Odoo.

8. Review the summary that you wrote about your changes and click on the Create pull request button again.

9. At the bottom of the page, check the mergeability status and address any issues.

10. As soon as your PR is ready for merging, a member of the Odoo team will be automatically assigned for review. If the reviewer has questions or remarks, they will post them as comments and you will be notified by email. Those comments must be resolved for the contribution to go forward.

11. Once your changes are approved, the reviewer merges them and they appear online the next day!