literalinclude directives

[ucodery]

This is my proof-of-concept of replacing most code blocks with linteralincludes from separate files maintained in the VCS. It is not meant to be merged as-is but to inspire discussion with a live example.

The idea is that, rather than type out example code every time, code that is often nearly or entirely identical, this code can be written out once and reused across the documentation.

Pros:

• examples can't get out of sync
• readers see the same example code everywhere, maintaining consistency
• the example files can be fully linted/tested as part of an overall working project structure

Unintentionally, just moving this file's examples to individual files revealed two syntax errors at pyproject-toml-python-package-metadata.md:{200,209}.

Cons:

• an extra layer of abstraction, possible barrier to new contributors, have to open 2 or more files for the same update
• changes to the example code can cause cascading docs failures (examples might still pass all tests, but editors of examples must know what every window into these files expects to see)

[lwasser]

@ucodery this is really cool. can you tell me how this works in terms of checking the pyproject.toml file?

you wrote this:

Unintentionally, just moving this file's examples to individual files revealed two syntax errors at pyproject-toml-python-package-metadata.md:{200,209}.

is there some built in sphinx check? as this is a toml file? that is actually a fairly significant benefit from my perspective. i've had inadvertent mistakes several times in sample pyproject.toml files that i have created (i always forget to add quotes around version = "" for instance).

we could potentially add notes for contributors about hit the includes work if that is a concern. but from my perspective this seems like a significant improvement.

[lwasser]

does anyone else see a reason to NOT move to this type of workflow for example toml (and other files)? the files are also then downloadable (potentially?) by users.

[ucodery]

is there some built in sphinx check? as this is a toml file?

Nothing like a build-time check. IIRC it was my IDE telling me I was writing bad toml when I copied over the file. But my plan would be to actually build and test this example project, necessitating correct syntax (at least) for all files. This would probably be a CI action, but separate from building the site.

If you like this I can add contributing documentation, then it could be ready for merge. And I would follow-on to extract most other code examples.

[lwasser]

If you like this I can add contributing documentation, then it could be ready for merge. And I would follow-on to extract most other code examples.

Yes please. i think this sounds great. would you then create a small demo package? i'm only asking because we do have this repo already: https://github.com/pyOpenSci/pyosPackage but it's obviously a separate repo which wouldn't work with what you are suggesting here. My take on your approach is that it will ensure that we use valid examples! In the future we can even use nbsphinx or one of the other tools to run code in our guidebook (if we need to).

[ucodery]

Yes, there will be a full demo package maybe including code that never appears in the docs, just so that we can test such a project end-to-end - not only linting, but testing that it actually does what we say it does in the docs. For now I will probably create a separate "dummy" project very similar, if not identical, to pyosPackage. In the future we can perhaps sync them up better (e.g. some sort of CI keeping them in sync or git submodules). It also might be that we need to have several demo projects in the documentation repo (hatchling vs meson, flat vs nested layouts...) and I don't know that you want all that in one example project.

[lwasser]

ahhh ok. this makes sense! the syncing is my only concern then so we're not maintaining another package you know? but if there is some way to manage that via ci or submodule that would be great

but i would in the future like to have an example project using something like meson that is non pure python. we just aren't quite there yet.

btw i also have this: https://github.com/pyOpenSci/examplePy 😆 where i was playing with a lot of the tools. but you can see i haven't touched it in a long time!

[ucodery]

This branch is now ready to merge. I have opened #248 #249 and #250 for follow-on work.

[lwasser]

@all-contributors please add @ucodery for code, review, maintenance, documentation

i am not sure how this happened @ucodery but somehow you have maintainer status here and are not on the list of contributors. let's fix this now!

[allcontributors[bot]]

@lwasser

I've put up a pull request to add @ucodery! :tada: