Use CI to automatically build an up-to-date paper.

[lypwig]

Using a Continuous Integration server could add interesting features for this paper:

• maintainabilty: no maintenance is required to publish the paper, just focus about writing it ;) ;
• consistency: the PDF file will be allways up to date with its source;
• transparency: the user will have the possibility to build the PDF by himself: in this way it will be a proof that the PDF is the actual paper written collectively and not a maliciously-modified version;
• accessibility: we can easily provide the paper in e-pub format, making it easier to read (with Pandoc);
• style: a nice pretty-printed version could be available online (for instance in gh-pages), including pdf and e-pub downloadable versions (with Jekyll or mkdocs);
• more accessibility: the user will be able to download the PDF or e-pub in any available translations.

We can for example use Travis, which is free for open-source projects, and build the paper each time someone push/merge on master.

I have a little experience in continuous integration and document generation (including LaTeX), and if you are agree with this issue, I can show you a proof of concept this week-end.

[domi41]

Note that the bibliography is not available in the mediawiki file, it's only in the PDF.

[lypwig]

Note that the bibliography is not available in the mediawiki file, it's only in the PDF.

Indeed! Few resources (such as the cover, LaTeX sources and bib) must be shared to do this. Since I am now assigned to this issue, may I ask how to get them? ;)

[domi41]

The PDF is usually committed by @santisiri ; @santisiri can you commit the sources for PDF generation as well ?

[santisiri]

i think this is a great idea.

the PDF was done manually for aesthetic reasons, but a mediawiki to LaTeX importer could be easily implemented. there's a bunch of projects for that on github, some of them run on python. I haven't found time to implement them, but if someone wants to make that happen, it would be great!

also, happy to accept any pull request regarding CI, i think it's a great idea.

[domi41]

@santisiri How strongly do you feel about mediawiki ? We find its syntax cumbersome and not literature-friendly (nor human-friendly for that matter). A markdown to LaTeX should be easy enough to implement too. It might require some tweaking to handle the "paper" format (cover, bib, quotes, alignments), but nothing too complicated. Might even make a useful lib for others.

@roipoussiere Would love to see a PoC of this as well !

[santisiri]

@domi41 what pushed me to mediawiki was that

• it rendered properly on github
• automatically generates index
• it's used by @bitcoin core's BIP process
• it's wiki friendly

that said, i'm all in favor for including a latex version in this repo (and even a markup .md one).