Link from reference API to source code on GitHub

[droumis]

This PR is changing the target of the reference API source code links from being an isolated webpage with poor readability (often yellow on white) to the associated GitHub source code for the given object. We are using a difference Sphinx extension and adding logic to generate the appropriate links. It will only work for a subset of our core package that adopts the standard reference API page generation, as noted below:

Tested and seems to work for:

• [x] Param
• [x] Datashader
• [x] Panel
• [x] HoloViews

No ref api docs, does not work for:

• hvPlot
• Colorcet
• GeoViews

Uses custom reference API page generation script, does not work for:

• Lumen

Evidence for Param, Datashader:

https://github.com/holoviz-dev/nbsite/assets/6613202/633d0aae-675f-44ae-94b1-ff1e700fe4b8

https://github.com/holoviz-dev/nbsite/assets/6613202/e4900554-15a0-4169-84dc-9ed9b7075e3d

See evidence for Panel and HoloViews in the comments below

[maximlt]

@droumis do you happen to remember what the issue was with Panel?

[droumis]

It's on my todo list to look back into this. I think I tried recently to reproduce and capture the issue better but ran into some other issue and then other priorities came up. I should have time in the next week to try again.

[droumis]

Panel: Seems to be working now for Panel on my local machine:

https://github.com/holoviz-dev/nbsite/assets/6613202/4ed109d0-3136-4216-ad26-ee6876b6fd69

Lumen: reference API doesn't have source links. We would need to change Lumen's special generate_reference.py code to get this working. I think we just skip Lumen for now.

I can try HoloViews later, but I've never tried to build these docs locally before. Is there a way to run the HoloViews docs build to the dev site using this specific nbsite branch? Maybe creating a fake PR and changing the github workflow in some way to point to this branch?

[maximlt]

I can try HoloViews later, but I've never tried to build these docs locally before. Is there a way to run the HoloViews docs build to the dev site using this specific nbsite branch? Maybe creating a fake PR and changing the github workflow in some way to point to this branch?

Yes you should be able to do that:

• create a PR on HoloViews that updates its docs.yaml workflow file, adding a step to re-install nbsite from this branch. I can never remember the pip install incantation required to install from a git repo, even less so from a branch 🙃
• launch a dev build of HoloViews' docs from Github's UI picking the HoloViews PR.

[droumis]

In progress: https://github.com/holoviz/holoviews/pull/6046

[droumis]

Alright, it's working on the HoloViews dev site. I also tested on the Panel dev site.

https://github.com/holoviz-dev/nbsite/assets/6613202/9c4e6219-6ab4-4546-ad29-d2e6c497e58d

I think we should come back to Lumen with another PR later.

Otherwise, I think this is ready to merge.