Blender Manual Maker

Script to help rebuilding the Blender manual. I use it as part of a pipeline inside VS Code.

First Steps

• Download and build the Blender manual following the official instructions.
• I recommend the Browser Preview extension in Visual Studio Code to check your changes after you rebuild.

Usage

$./blender-manual-maker DOCS_FOLDER [/full/path/to/file/that/changed.rst]

Visual Studio Code

I like to open the //manual subfolder in VS Code, to limit the files I see.

So the example below uses "${workspaceFolder}/../" to pass the base folder where I checked the Blender docs.

tasks.json example:

{
    // See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
    // for the documentation about the tasks.json format
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "Rebuild Current Document",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "blender-manual-maker",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/../",
                "${file}"
            ],
            "group": {
                "kind": "build"
            },
            "problemMatcher": []
        },
        {
            "label": "Rebuild All Documents",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "blender-manual-maker",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/../"
            ],
            "group": "build",
            "isDefault": true
        }
    ]
}

Workflow

• Edit to your heart's content.
• Build with Ctrl + Shift + B.
• Hit refresh in the Browser Preview.

Advanced Tips

• It is better to use virtual environment to install the python tools to build the manual. If you do so make sure to create it as venv under the blender_docs folder.
• If you are familiar with git I highly recommend git-svn as a middle layer between your workflow and Blender manual svn repository.