Jalen: Docs tasks

Familiarize yourself with how GitLab authors documentation

Read the following to become familiar with how technical writing is done at GitLab:

• Complete the GitLab Technical Writing Fundamentals course.
• Read GitLab Documentation guidelines and the various pages linked from the introduction.
• Familiarize yourself with the word list and style guide.
• Look at the gitlab project's doc directory. Each page on the docs site is in this directory. For example:

  • This page on the docs site: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/labels.html

  • Corresponds to this page in the repo: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/blob/master/doc/user/project/labels.md

    For quick access to any markdown file, when you're on the docs site, scroll to the bottom and select View page source.

• Review the GitLab docs navigation file. This file is how the left navigation on the docs site is populated.

Set up your computer

• Ensure you have Git installed and your SSH key added to GitLab.
• Install an IDE, like VS Code.
• Optional. Set up a local docs build on your machine by following these instructions.

Now you can start creating small merge requests with doc updates.

Fix these issues

Open MRs for the following issues. Instructions for how to open an MR are just below.

• first one
• second one
• etc

Create a merge request (MR)

You can create an MR many different ways. Some possibilities are:

• Open a markdown file in the repo and in the top right, select Edit (to edit in the IDE or in the UI).
• Go to the page on the docs site, scroll to the bottom, and View Page Source. Then Edit in the top right.
• In your local environment, in the repo you cloned, edit the markdown file. Then:
  1. Create a branch: git checkout -b mybranchname
  2. Add the files you edited: git add .
  3. Add a commit message: git commit -m "My commit message here" (Start with a capital letter, use 3-5 words, do not end in period)
  4. Push to the repo: git push origin mybranchname
  5. After you run this command, follow the URL Git gives you to create the MR.

To get a review, ask the #docs slack channel or assign the MR to a writer by using roulette.

If you're not ready to start making merge requests, you can create a test project and use it to practice.