This guide provides all the information you need to become a successful Asciidoctor PDF developer and code contributor! You’ll learn how to retrieve the code from GitHub, execute the tests, build and install the gem, and run the application with your local modifications.
To contribute code, fork the project on GitHub, hack away, and send a pull request with your proposed changes. All pull requests must include a) tests that verify the code change and b) an entry in the CHANGELOG.adoc file to document what changed. If a pull request is missing tests or a CHANGELOG entry, it will not be merged and may be closed.
Feel free to share ideas in the #users/asciidoctor-pdf stream of the project chat or report issues in the issue tracker.
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When filing an issue, you must include the AsciiDoc source and theme file (if relevant) that demonstrates the problem. Sharing a screenshot of the output is not sufficient information to reproduce the issue and therefore not actionable. If the AsciiDoc source is not provided within 24 hours of filing the issue, the issue will be closed. A reproducible test case is required (in any form you can provide it) so we can concentrate our time on fixing the problem instead of trying to reverse engineer the scenario. |
Follow the instructions below to learn how to clone the source and run it from your local copy.
In order to set up the project build and run the tests, you’ll need the following software installed on your computer:
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git
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Base development tools (for installing certain development gems)
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Ruby (with development headers)
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Bundler (optional, but recommended)
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pdftocairo (required for visual tests)
The test suite relies on additional software to analyze and assert the behavior of Asciidoctor PDF. Therefore, these prerequisites are more extensive than what’s needed for using Asciidoctor PDF alone.
If you’re running a Debian-based Linux distribution, you can install the required software using the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git ruby-dev ruby-bundler poppler-utils
If you’re running a Fedora-based Linux distribution, you can install the required software using the following command:
$ sudo dnf group install -y "Development Tools" sudo dnf install -y redhat-rpm-config ruby-devel rubygem-bundler poppler-utils
If you want to run the tests on Fedora without using Bundler, install these dependencies instead:
$ sudo dnf install -y ruby rubygem-asciidoctor rubygem-chunky_png rubygem-coderay rubygem-pdf-inspector \ rubygem-prawn rubygem-prawn-icon rubygem-prawn-svg rubygem-prawn-table rubygem-prawn-templates \ rubygem-rouge rubygem-rspec rubygem-treetop poppler-utils
You can study the CI workflow at .github/workflows/ci.yml to learn more about what software is needed to run the full test suite.
You can retrieve the source of Asciidoctor PDF in one of two ways:
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Clone the git repository
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Download a zip archive of the repository
If you want to clone the git repository, copy the GitHub repository URL and pass it to the git clone
command:
$ git clone https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf
Next, change to the project directory:
$ cd asciidoctor-pdf
If you want to download a zip archive, click the Download Zip button on the right-hand side of the repository page on GitHub. Once the download finishes, extract the archive, open a console and change to that directory.
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Instead of working out of the asciidoctor-pdf directory, you can add the absolute path of the bin directory to your PATH environment variable.
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We’ll leverage the project configuration to install the necessary dependencies.
We recommend using RVM to manage the installation of Ruby you’ll use to build and develop the project.
$ rvm use 3.1
The dependencies needed to use Asciidoctor PDF are defined in the Gemfile at the root of the project. You can use Bundler to install the dependencies listed there.
To check you have Bundler available, use the bundle
command to query the installed version:
$ bundle version
If the bundle
command is not available, use the gem
command to install it.
$ gem install bundler
Now configure Bundler to install the project dependencies within the project and run it:
$ bundle config --local path .bundle/gems bundle
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You must call bundle from the project directory so that it can find the Gemfile.
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Tests are written using RSpec. To run the tests, invoke rspec via bundler.
$ bundle exec rspec
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If you’re using Ruby 2.7, you may have to turn off deprecation warnings using export RUBYOPT='-W:no-deprecated' in order for all of the tests to pass.
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To disable tests that access the network, pass the -t ~network
option:
$ bundle exec rspec -t ~network
Similarly, to disable the visual integration tests, pass the -t ~visual
option:
$ bundle exec rspec -t ~visual
If a visual integration test fails, you can instruct the test suite to keep the files in the spec/output directory by setting the DEBUG
environment variable:
$ DEBUG=true bundle exec rspec -t visual
If you want to see the name of each test as it is run, add the -fd
option:
$ bundle exec rspec -fd
You can also use the provided Rake task (note the name difference):
$ bundle exec rake spec
Running tests using rspec
directly gives you the advantage of being able to specify additional options.
To run a single test, you can filter by the name of the test. For example, to run all tests that pertain to failures, use:
$ bundle exec rspec -e fail
To run all tests that have wip
in the name, use:
$ bundle exec rspec -e wip
You can also run all tests in a given file by passing the file’s path to rspec:
$ bundle exec rspec spec/toc_spec.rb
For a full list of options that rspec provides, run rspec -h
.
Like with Bundler, you have to run the application from the project directory.
Assuming all the required gems install properly, verify you can run the asciidoctor-pdf
script using Ruby:
$ bundle exec asciidoctor-pdf -v
If you see the version of Asciidoctor PDF printed, you’re ready to use Asciidoctor PDF!
You can use the application to convert a document as follows:
$ bundle exec asciidoctor-pdf /path/to/sample.adoc
If you want to install the application globally so you can run it anywhere, use the following rake
task:
$ bundle exec rake install
This task will package the gem and install it into your system gems.
If you want to install the gem using a separate command, first use the following rake
task to build it:
$ rm -rf pkg bundle exec rake build
This task packages the application as a gem and writes it to the pkg directory.
A message will be printed to the console telling you the exact filename.
You can now use the gem install
command to install it.
$ gem install pkg/*.gem
You’ll want to pay attention to which Ruby installation you are installing the gem into.
If successful, the asciidoctor-pdf
executable will be available on your PATH.
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If you’re running Asciidoctor PDF in a Gradle build, follow these instructions to use the development version of Asciidoctor PDF. |
To test a pull request (PR), you first need to fetch the branch that contains the change and switch to it. The steps below are covered in detail in the GitHub help.
Let’s assume you want to test PR 955. Here’s how you fetch and switch to it:
$ git fetch origin pull/955/head:pr-955-review git checkout pr-955-review
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Make sure you replace the number with the number of the PR you want to test. |
In case any dependencies have changed, you should run the bundle
command again:
$ bundle
Now you can run the application as modified by the PR:
$ bundle exec asciidoctor-pdf /path/to/sample.adoc
To switch back to main type:
$ git checkout main
If you’re using Asciidoctor PDF in your application, you can test against the code in the pull request using Bundler.
First, you need to find the origin URL and branch of the PR. You can find this information on the PR page.
Next, update the entry in your project’s Gemfile to point to the branch from which the pull request was originated.
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'asciidoctor-pdf', github: '<username>/asciidoctor-pdf', branch: 'issue-864'
Then run Bundler to update the gems in your project:
$ rm -f Gemfile.lock bundle config --local github.https true bundle --path=.bundle/gems --binstubs=.bundle/.bin
Now you can run the development version of Asciidoctor PDF using:
$ bundle exec asciidoctor-pdf input.adoc
or
$ ./.bundle/.bin/asciidoctor-pdf input.adoc
These instructions work for testing any development version of Asciidoctor PDF directly from GitHub.
Before you commit code, you should run it through the linter to make sure it adheres to the coding style. You can run the linter using the following command:
$ bundle exec rake lint
The coding style is enforced by RuboCop. The rules are defined in .rubocop.yml. These rules extend from the default rule set to match the style of the project.
In additional to those rules, the following rules are enforced manually:
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use tap/each instead of each_with_object to build a new Hash from an enumerable object
To generate a code coverage report when running tests using simplecov, set the COVERAGE
environment variable as follows when running the tests:
$ COVERAGE=true bundle exec rake spec
You’ll see a total coverage score as well as a link to the HTML report in the output. The HTML report helps you understand which lines and branches were missed, if any.
Despite being fast, the downside of using simplecov is that it misses code branches.
You can use deep-cover instead of simplecov to generate a more thorough report.
To do so, first run bundle
at least once with the COVERAGE
environment variable set:
$ COVERAGE=true bundle
Then, set the COVERAGE
environment variable to deep
when running the tests:
$ COVERAGE=deep bundle exec rake spec
You’ll see a total coverage score, a detailed coverage report, and a link to HTML report in the output. The HTML report helps you understand which lines and branches were missed, if any.
The formatted text is first converted to a pseudo-HTML language, then converted from there into Prawn text fragments using a treetop parser. treetop is a Ruby-based parsing DSL based on parsing expression grammars. This strategy allows the converter to manipulate the formatted text without needing the know the internal details of how Prawn arranges text fragments. It also allows Asciidoctor to behave in a consistent manner, since some of the inline parsing in Asciidoctor assumes that the converter is generating an SGML-based language like HTML or DocBook.
The parsing expression grammar is defined in the source file lib/asciidoctor/pdf/formatted_text/parser.treetop. If you make a change to this file, you must regenerate the parser, which is defined in the source file lib/asciidoctor/pdf/formatted_text/parser.rb. (Don’t modify the generated parser directly).
Use the following command to regenerate the parser:
bundle exec tt lib/asciidoctor/pdf/formatted_text/parser.treetop
Then look for any places that a type is mixed into an object multiple times and remove the duplicate. Finally, you then need to commit both files.
The documentation is generated using Antora. Using Antora, you can generate the documentation for this project alone or you can generate it alongside all the other Asciidoctor documentation. If you are making a substantial change to the documentation, we ask that you at least generate the documentation for this project alone.
In order to build the documentation, you need Node.js installed on your system. Refer to the Install Node.js section of the Antora installation quickstart to learn how to do so.
Node.js provides a tool named npx
that will install and run Antora.
To build the documentation for Asciidoctor PDF out of the git worktree, create the following Antora playbook file at the root of the project.
runtime:
log:
level: info
site:
title: Asciidoctor Docs
start_page: pdf-converter::index.adoc
content:
sources:
- url: .
branches: HEAD
start_paths: docs
asciidoc:
attributes:
experimental: ''
idprefix: '@'
idseparator: '-@'
table-caption: false
table-frame: 'none@'
table-grid: 'rows@'
example-caption: false
listing-caption: false
hide-uri-scheme: '@'
ui:
bundle:
url: https://github.com/asciidoctor/docs.asciidoctor.org-ui/releases/download/prod-309/ui-bundle.zip
Next, run Antora on this playbook using the following command:
$ npx antora local-antora-playbook.yml
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You can safely ignore invalid xrefs that point outside of the asciidoctor-pdf component (such as to the asciidoctor compoent). |
The command will print the location of the generated site that you can visit in your browser.
In order to build the Asciidoctor PDF documentation alongside all the other Asciidoctor documentation, you first need to clone the playbook project, which hosts the build for the site.
First, move to the parent directory of the asciidoctor-pdf clone:
$ cd ..
Next, clone the docs.asciidoctor.org repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/asciidoctor/docs.asciidoctor.org
Switch to that directory:
$ cd docs.asciidoctor.org
Now edit the Antora playbook file, antora-playbook.yml, and change the entry for asciidoctor-pdf so it points to the worktree of your clone:
- url: ./../asciidoctor-pdf
branches: HEAD
start_path: docs
Notice that we have changed both the url
key and the branches
key.
You can use an absolute path to the local clone (e.g., /path/to/asciidoctor-pdf or C:/path/to/asciidoctor-pdf) instead of a relative path if it makes it easier to find.
The symbolic name HEAD
means to use whatever branch you have checked out.
You can add other branch names if you prefer, though it is really not necessary to do so.
You can now build the full site using the following command:
$ npx antora antora-playbook.yml
Once again, the command will print the location of the generated site that you can visit in your browser.
Building the full site is not strictly necessary. You also have the option of removing other entries to limit how much is built. Consult the Antora documentation to learn more about how to customize the Antora build.