Solana Validator Docs Readme

This validator's documentation is built using Docusaurus v2 with npm. Static content delivery is handled using vercel.

Note: The documentation within this repo is specifically focused on the Solana validator client maintained by Solana Labs. The more "common" documentation, which is generalized to the Solana protocol as a whole and applies to all Solana validator implementations, is maintained within the developer-content repo. Those "common docs" are managed by the Solana Foundation within their GitHub organization and are publicly accessible via solana.com/docs

Local Development

To set up the Solana Validator Docs site locally:

• install dependencies using npm
• build locally via ./build.sh
• run the local development server
• make your changes and updates as needed

Note: After cloning this repo to your local machine, all the local development commands are run from within this docs directory.

Install dependencies

Install the site's dependencies via npm:

npm install

Build locally

The build script generates static content into the build directory and can be served using any static content hosting service.

./build.sh

Running this build script requires Docker, and will auto fetch the solanalabs/rust image from Docker hub to compile the desired version of the Solana CLI from source.

This build script will also:

• generate the cli/usage.md document from the output of each of the Solana CLI commands and sub-commands
• convert each of the art/*.bob files into SVG images used throughout the docs
• generate the language Translations

Note: Running this build script is required before being able to run the site locally via the npm run start command since it will generate the cli/usage.md document.

If you run into errors or issues with this step, see Common Issues below. See also CI Build Flow for more details on production deployments of the docs.

Local development server

This command starts the Docusaurus local development server and opens up a browser window.

npm run start

Note: Most changes are reflected live without having to restart the server or refresh the page. However, some changes may require a manual refresh of the page or a restart of the development server (via the command above).

Translations

Translations are sourced from Crowdin and generated when the branch noted as the STABLE channel is built via the build.sh script.

For local development, and with the CROWDIN_PERSONAL_TOKEN env variable set, use the following two commands in this docs directory.

To download the newest documentation translations run:

npm run crowdin:download

To upload changes from src & generate explicit IDs:

npm run crowdin:upload

Translations are only included when deploying the STABLE channel of the docs (via build.sh). Resulting in only the docs.solanalabs.com documentation site to include translated content. Therefore, the edge and beta docs sites are not expected to include translated content, even though the language selector will still be present.

Common issues

CROWDIN_PERSONAL_TOKEN env variable

The crowdin.yml file requires a CROWDIN_PERSONAL_TOKEN env variable to be set with a valid Crowdin access token.

For local development, you can store this in a .env file that the Crowdin CLI will auto detect.

For building and publishing via the GitHub actions, the CROWDIN_PERSONAL_TOKEN secret must be set.

Translation locale fails to build with SyntaxError

Some translation locales may fail to build with a SyntaxError thrown by Docusaurus due to how certain language symbols get parsed by Docusaurus while generating the static version of the docs.

Note: When any locale fails to build, the entire docs build will fail resulting in the docs not being able to be deployed at all.

There are several known locales that fail to build the current documentation. They are listed in the commented out localesNotBuilding attribute in the docusaurus.config.js

CI Build Flow

The docs are built and published in Travis CI with the ./build.sh script. On each PR, the docs are built, but not published.

In each post-commit build, docs are built and published using vercel to their respective domain depending on the build branch.

• Master branch docs are published to edge.docs.solanalabs.com
• Beta branch docs are published to beta.docs.solanalabs.com
• Latest release tag docs are published to docs.solanalabs.com

Common Issues

Bad sidebars file (or cli/usage not found)

Error: Bad sidebars file.
These sidebar document ids do not exist:
- cli/usage,

If you have NOT successfully run the build script, then the cli/usage.md file will not exist within your local repo (since it is in .gitignore). Not having this doc file, will result in the error message above.

If the Rust toolchain (specifically cargo) is installed on your system, you can specifically build the cli/usage.md document via:

./build-cli-usage.sh

Or using Docker and the normal build script, you can perform a full production build of the docs to generate this file:

./build.sh

Permission denied for the Docker socket

Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Post

Running docs build script (./build.sh) required the use of Docker.****

Ensuring you have Docker installed on your system and it is running.

You may also try running either of these build scripts (and by association, Docker) with elevation permissions via sudo:

sudo ./build.sh
# or
sudo ./build-cli-usage.sh

Multiple SVG images not found

Error: Image static/img/***.svg used in src/***.md not found.

During the build process of the docs (specifically within the ./convert-ascii-to-svg.sh script run by ./build.sh), each of the art/*.bob files are converted to SVG images and saved to the static/img directory.

To correct this issue, use the steps above to build the docs locally.

Note: While not generating and saving these SVG images within your local repo will NOT prevent you from running the local development server, it will result in numerous output errors in your terminal.