CUCC Expedition Manuals - Editing the Handbook

Editing the Handbook (2)

Handbook and Repository editing

These pages are for cavers wanting to:

1. quickly edit a correction using "Edit this page", or
2. edit several pages in repositories using the expo laptop
3. edit several pages using your own laptop

2. Editing this handbook and files in repositories

The recommended way of editing this handbook, historic expo files and survey data in bulk is to use a laptop which has the version control software installed and configured. The person editing needs to know how to use this software, and also needs to know how to edit raw HTML files using a text editor.

• The expo server is on a machine far, far away that we only access remotely.
• These instructions apply to editing all files in the version-controlled repositories
• The :expoweb: repository holds this handbook and templates used to display most cave data
• The :loser: repository holds the cave survey data in survex files
• The :drawings: repository holds cave survey drawings files (therion, tunnel)

The Expo laptop has the necessary software installed, so it is best to learn how to do this when sitting at that laptop.

It's important to understand that the pages you can edit by this method are stored in a version control system (see below). This stops us losing data and makes it very hard for you to screw anything up permanently, so don't worry about making changes - they can always be reverted if there is a problem. It also means that several people can work on the site on different computers at once and normally merge their changes easily.

The recommended editing workflow is to (a) use the version control software to synchronise your local laptop copy of the website files with that on the server ("pull" from the server); (b) edit a set of .html files on your laptop so that all links between them are consistent, (c) save the files locally, and (d) "commit" them locally; (e) "push" the collection of changes to the expo server.

See the repositories page.

What you can't do

All the scans, photos, presentations, fat documents and videos are not stored in the version control repositories so you cannot edit or change them using the method described here. The process for uploading them is described in the expo survey process.

3. Your own laptop

Setting up your own laptop so that it can do everything the expo laptop can do is quite a complicated process. At a minimum you will be an experienced software nerd already and will have git and a text editor installed and you will know how to use them. You will have done the ssh key-pair setup process - which you can only do entirely on your own if you have access to the expo laptop.

See setting up your own Bulk Update laptop for the full list of software we use and where to get it.

Note that the instructions are primarily for people using Linux with some help for those using Windows. If you are a Mac user then you are on your own.

Back to to "Edit this page"
Forwards to Data Management Manual