[mapserver-dev] Versioned MapServer Docs?

Seth G sethg at geographika.co.uk
Thu Mar 18 13:01:54 PDT 2021


Hi all,

Several Mapfile keywords are proposed to be removed as part of [RFC 133](https://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-133.html). 

If the docs will also have these keywords removed then it could lead to users on older versions of MapServer without documentation for keywords they are using. With regards to removed keywords I can think of two options:

1. Keep the legacy keywords in the docs and mark them as deprecated for a specific version. 
2. Remove the keywords from the documentation, but have older versions of the MapServer docs available. 

My preference would be for option 2 as this reduces "clutter" in the docs for the latest version. It is also how the majority of online docs now work at ReadTheDocs e.g. https://shapely.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ or https://shapely.readthedocs.io/en/maint-1.6/
So the MapServer homepage would have something like:

- https://mapserver.org/en/latest/
- https://mapserver.org/en/7.6/

There are however complications as the MapServer docs also incorporate MapCache and TinyOWS which have different versions and release cycles. Not sure how this could be handled without a deeper folder hierarchy. 

With the backports setup perhaps they could be pointed to deploy to a subfolder. Are deployments currently manual or automated? The scripts seem to be commented out at:

https://github.com/MapServer/MapServer-documentation/blob/1cd0b81865c636b04f9efb68f450db8f900b7714/.travis.yml#L35


Seth


--
web:http://geographika.co.uk
twitter: @geographika


More information about the mapserver-dev mailing list