Add Docker and docker-compose support for documentation development (#176)

Dockerfile

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+# Use an official Python runtime as a parent image
+FROM python:3.10-slim
+
+# Set environment variables
+ENV PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1 \
+    PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
+
+# Install system dependencies
+RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
+    make \
+    git \
+    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
+
+# Set the working directory in the container
+WORKDIR /app
+
+# Copy the file containing the requirements/setup first to leverage Docker cache
+COPY setup.cfg setup.py README.md README.rst ./
+
+# Install python dependencies including docs extras
+# We use --editable to allow volume mounting to work effectively for code updates if needed,
+# though mainly we are just building docs.
+# If just for docs, editable might not be strictly necessary but it's consistent with dev setup.
+RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip && \
+    pip install --no-cache-dir --editable ".[docs]"
+
+# Copy the rest of the application code
+COPY . .
+
+# Expose the port that sphinx-autobuild will run on
+EXPOSE 8000
+
+# Default command to serve the documentation with live-reload
+CMD ["sphinx-autobuild", "docs/source", "docs/build/html", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8000"]

README.md

@@ -27,6 +27,12 @@ Knowing where a software package comes from, what its license is and whether it
 
 > [!TIP]
 > To manually build the documentation, run `make docs` from the root of this repo.
+>
+> Alternatively, you can use Docker to build and serve the documentation with live-reload:
+> ```bash
+> docker-compose up
+> ```
+> The documentation will be available at http://localhost:8000.
 
 ## Contributing
 

docker-compose.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+version: '3.8'
+
+services:
+  docs:
+    build: .
+    volumes:
+      - .:/app
+    ports:
+      - "8000:8000"
+    command: sphinx-autobuild docs/source docs/build/html --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000