# Step by Step Documentation Tutorial

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093>\
**Category:** Community\
**Tags:** documentation, tutorials, blog-post\
**Created:** [September 5, 2020, 8:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093 "2020-09-05T08:35:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![mortenpi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mortenpi/32/158_2.png) [@mortenpi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mortenpi)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2020, 12:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093/22 "2020-09-21T00:24:13Z")

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@lmiq: It’s visible, it just doesn’t have a `docs/` directory ([https://github.com/PetrKryslUCSD/FinEtools.jl/tree/gh-pages/](https://github.com/PetrKryslUCSD/FinEtools.jl/tree/gh-pages/)). Note that for the usual Documenter setups you wouldn’t have a `docs/` directory there – the docs website files should be on the root of the `gh-pages` branch.

While not strictly necessary, `gh-pages` would ideally be an [orhpan branch](https://bugfactory.io/blog/orphaned-brachnes-in-git/). I noticed that [PDBTools’ `gh-pages`](https://github.com/m3g/PDBTools/tree/gh-pages) is actually forks the main branch. I would recommend you delete `gh-pages` and let Documenter create it for you.

Regarding the documentation not being deployed to GitHub pages: your [`make.jl`](https://github.com/m3g/PDBTools/blob/master/docs/make.jl) doesn’t have a `deploydocs` call, which actually deploys the documentation. See [The `deploydocs` Function](https://juliadocs.github.io/Documenter.jl/stable/man/hosting/#The-deploydocs-Function) in the Documenter manual.

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**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2020, 1:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093/23 "2020-09-21T01:33:35Z")

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Thank you. I was actually finding out some of those errors and missing things, and I almost got there. I succeeded in deploying a `dev` version of the package, but I am still struggling to see a `stable` version as well. My `deploydocs` function looks like, now:

```julia
deploydocs(
    repo = "github.com/m3g/PDBTools.git",
    target = "build",
    branch = "gh-pages",
    versions = ["stable" => "v^", "v#.#"],
)

```

I tested different things there, but no luck yet.

(ps. One small but annoying thing was that my repository does not have the “.jl” in its name. Therefore, where the docs say something like `PACKAGE_NAME.jl.git` I had to remove the `.jl`. Is it a recommended practice to add the `.jl` to the git repository?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mortenpi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mortenpi/32/158_2.png) [@mortenpi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mortenpi)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2020, 1:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093/24 "2020-09-21T01:41:06Z")

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For `stable/` you need to tag a version and make sure that the CI runs for the tag. You have TagBot, so it should happen automatically for future releases.

Assuming that the `master` branch hasn’t diverged from v0.10.1 in terms of docs/functionality, you could manually create a tag `v0.10.1+docs1` off the `master` branch, to test it. This should also deploy the docs for v0.10.1 (but be aware that the docstrings etc. in the manual will correspond to the newer tagged commit, not to the original `v0.10.1` commit).

> [@lmiq](#):
>
> Is it a recommended practice to add the `.jl` to the git repository?

It’s not a requirement (i.e. the registry and the package manager do not care), but it is the usual practice to indicate that a repo is a Julia package by using that extension in the repo name.

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**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/step-by-step-documentation-tutorial/46093/25 "2020-09-22T01:13:13Z")

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Everything is working now, thank you all very much.

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