How to contribute documentation

Thank you very much for contributing to StarRocks documentation! Your help is important to help improve the docs!

Before contributing, please read this article carefully to quickly understand the tips, writing process, and documentation templates.

Tips

1. Language: Please use at least one language, Chinese or English. The bilingual version is highly preferred.
2. Index: When you add a topic, you also need to add an entry for the topic in the table of contents(TOC) file, for example, [introduction](../docs/en/introduction/what_is_starrocks.md). The path to your topic must be a relative path from the docs directory. This TOC file will eventually be rendered as the side navigation bar for documentation on our official website.
3. Images: Images must first be put into the assets folder. When inserting images into the documentation, please use the relative path, such as ![test image](../../assets/test.png).
4. Links: For internal links (links to documentation on our official website), please use the relative path of the document, such as [test md](./data_source/catalog/hive_catalog.md). For external links, the format must be [link text](link URL).
5. Code blocks: You must add a language identifier for code blocks, for example, sql.
6. Currently, special symbols are not supported.

Writing Process

1. Writing phase: Write the topic (in Markdown) according to the following template, and add the topic's index to the TOC file if the topic is newly added.

   • Because the documentation is written in Markdown, we recommend that you use markdown-lint to check whether the documentation conforms to the Markdown syntax.
   • When adding the topic index, please pay attention to its category in the TOC file. For example, the Stream Load topic belongs to the Loading chapter.

2. Submission phase: Create a pull request to submit the documentation changes to our documentation repository on GitHub, English documentation is in the docs/ folder of the StarRocks repository (for the English version) and Chinese documentation repository (for the Chinese version).

   Note

   All commits in your PR should be signed. To sign a commit you can add the -s argument. For example:

   commit -s -m "Update the MV doc"

3. Lists of settings

   Long lists of settings like this do not index well in search, and the reader will not find the information even when they type in the exact name of a setting:

   - setting_name_foo
   
     Details for foo
   
   - setting_name_bar
     Details for bar
   ...

   Instead, use a section heading (e.g., ###) for the setting name and remove the indent for the text:

   ### setting_name_foo
   
   Details for foo
   
   ### setting_name_bar
   Details for bar
   ...

   Search results with a long list:	Search results with H3 headings

4. Review phase:

   The review phase includes automatic checks and manual review.

   • Automatic checks: whether the submitter has signed the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and whether the documentation conforms to the Markdown syntax.
   • Manual review: Committers will read and communicate with you about the documentation. It will be merged into StarRocks documentation repository and updated on the official website.

Documentation template

• Functions
• SQL command template
• Loading data template