To provide clear and accessible documentation, the Orange Country Lettings project uses Sphinx for generating documentation and Read the Docs for online hosting. This approach ensures that all essential information about the project structure, installation, and functionality is readily available for developers and users.

1. Setting Up Sphinx for Django Autodocumentation

To enable Sphinx to work with Django for automatic documentation generation, I created a minimal Django settings file at /docs/django_settings.py. This file contains basic configurations required for Sphinx to access and document Django’s models, views, and other components without errors.

• • • django_settings.py: Contains necessary settings for Sphinx to work without errors, including:
      • SECRET_KEY: A placeholder key (docs-super-secret) for documentation purposes.
      • INSTALLED_APPS: A minimal list of apps required by Sphinx to build documentation without warnings or errors. This includes standard Django apps and custom project-specific apps such as oc_lettings_site, core, lettings, and profiles.

2. Sphinx Configuration in conf.py

In the Sphinx configuration file (conf.py), I added the following lines to integrate Django settings:

sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath(".."))
# Specify the Django settings module
os.environ["DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE"] = "docs.django_settings"
django.setup()

These lines ensure that:

• • The project’s root directory is accessible to Sphinx.
  • The DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is set to docs.django_settings, allowing Sphinx to recognize and document the project’s Django components.
  • django.setup() initializes Django to make models and modules available for autodocumentation.

3. Installation Guide

To simplify the project setup, an installation guide was added to the documentation, outlining various methods to set up the project:

• • Using Makefile Commands: Users can install and configure the project using predefined commands in the Makefile.
  • Cloning from GitHub: Steps for cloning the project’s repository and setting up a local environment.
  • Deploying with Docker: Instructions on pulling the Docker image from Docker Hub and setting up the project as a container, providing a fast and consistent deployment method.

4. Hosting on Read the Docs

The documentation is hosted on Read the Docs, making it accessible online and keeping it updated with the latest changes. This allows users and developers to view project details, installation instructions, and code structure, all in a single, cohesive location.

With this setup, the project’s documentation is comprehensive, easy to update, and accessible for both local and remote reference. This approach supports collaboration, understanding, and maintainability for current and future contributors.