Documentation

The OpenStack documentation team supports developers and authors in writing documentation for a number of audiences. As is the case with most horizontal teams, the documentation team is not there to write documentation on behalf of projects, but will assist them and help coordinate standards across all of the projects.

OpenStack documentation serves a number of audiences: contributors to OpenStack, developers building applications on top of OpenStack, and operators of OpenStack clouds. Each project has a role in providing documentation to all of those audiences, though the nature of that role varies.

All of the project documentation (for all audiences) is published to and indexed at http://docs.openstack.org and is automatically updated on each commit.

Documentation for Contributors

OpenStack projects maintain their own documentation for their contributors. This includes code comments as well as narrative and reference documentation. Contributor documentation is maintained within the project’s own git repository and is written in reStructuredText.

Documentation for Developers

OpenStack APIs are documented for the use of developers writing applications that interact with OpenStack components. These docs are typically written in RST using the os-api-ref tool and published to docs.openstack.org. The API working group has published guidelines for OpenStack APIs.

Documentation for Operators and Users

OpenStack projects maintain their own documentation for operators and end users. This includes information on running and operating the software, concept guides, reference documentation, and more. There are also full-length manuals for OpenStack operators and users available, managed in their own repositories. Often these manuals are authored by operators and users themselves, with help from project teams.

How to Contribute Documentation

The documentation team maintains a guide with instructions on how to contribute documentation.