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Document how to dynamically configure git branch in the binder URL

Open akhmerov opened this issue 3 years ago • 2 comments

Link to the documentation you'd like to improve

https://sphinx-thebe.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configure.html

What to improve

After #17 is merged, we should document how to make sphinx provide the current git branch in generating the binder link.

Implementation

See https://github.com/executablebooks/sphinx-thebe/issues/40#issuecomment-907687684 for some ides from @akhmerov

akhmerov avatar Aug 28 '21 18:08 akhmerov

Thanks! If you could, can you add a short description of what the change would actually be? I'm still not quite sure what it means to "make sphinx use the current git branch".

choldgraf avatar Aug 28 '21 20:08 choldgraf

The scenario I consider is as follows:

  1. The user makes a PR introducing an API change to the library
  2. The CI builds preview documentation for the PR. Because the docs are built in the checked out repo, everything works :heavy_check_mark:
  3. The docs use sphinx-thebe thebe, which in turn is configured to use a binder URL.

State of the art:

Binder URL points to the default branch, and thebe fails in preview docs.

Possible improvement:

The binder URL is automatically determined during build, and the branch parameter of the binder URL is computed using something like git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD. This ensures that the correct binder branch is used.

akhmerov avatar Aug 28 '21 20:08 akhmerov