Guidance on how to (re?)integrate Plotly.NET into the build pipeline

[kMutagene]

Hi there @nicolaskruchten , recent issues (plotly/Plotly.NET#353, plotly/Plotly.NET#356) in Plotly.NET brought up a confusion regarding the official docs, which are severely out of date. To fix that, i'd like to ask for some guidance on the following things:

• how does the current docs build pipeline work for Plotly.NET F# and C# samples? Is the content of https://github.com/plotly/plotly.net-docs used for that?
• Is there a way to build those docs locally? https://github.com/plotly/plotly.net-docs has no readme.
• Can we move the docs over to the Plotly.NET repos, the same way it is handled for python, js, and R repositories? That would make it way easier for me to maintain.

[nicolaskruchten]

So as far as I remember, the plotly.net-docs repo is hooked into things via CircleCI: https://github.com/plotly/plotly.net-docs/blob/main/.circleci/config.yml ... that causes the notebooks to be executed into HTML and pushed to the built branch of that repo, and then triggers a rebuild/redeploy of the contents of https://plotly.com/fsharp/ via the commit to the graphing-library-docs repo. So ATM to update things you "just" need to commit to the plotly.net-docs repo.

If you want to migrate this process to some other repo, you'd need to merge this CircleCI config or equivalent into your own repo and get the same sort of hooks set up.

I'm no longer working for Plotly full-time, so I can't really help with this process, but maybe @HammadTheOne
@LiamConnors @alexcjohnson can help?

[kMutagene]

Thanks for the insights @nicolaskruchten

@alexcjohnson if i understand correctly, the only thing needed to get this started would be getting push rights to https://github.com/plotly/plotly.net-docs, would that be possible?

[kMutagene]

Hey @alexcjohnson @gvwilson There was a 'maintained by the plotly community' badge added to https://github.com/plotly/plotly.net-docs , but without answers/solutions to the questions above, i just cannot do that (also, i do not have maintenance access to that repo either).

There is also an open PR plotly/plotly.net-docs#21 by @LiamConnors so it seems like you guys still want up-to date F#/C# docs. However, given the current state those docs are horribly outdated and do more damage than good (they are on a preview version of 2.0.0, while latest is 5.0.0 with many backwards-incompatible changes).

We still host our own, up-to date documentation and i would be up for porting those into your system provided we can get the general setup sorted out.

[zyzhu]

I just revisited this issue and noticed that Alex has left Plotly. I am tagging a few members who are still with Plotly to see whether anybody can re-initiate the process to fix the official documentation on the plotly website. @ndrezn, @danton267, @BRONSOLO, @ashmpace. Sorry about the spam.

I concur that the current official documentation only does damage as the sample code is not up to date with the latest version. It is a pity that new users in the .Net space will not get a good experience reading the official documentation. It does not help expanding the Plotly community.

[ndrezn]

@gvwilson & I will be the main point of contact as Greg is Engineering Manager for libraries & I'm the PM for the team. I'll raise this issue at our next internal meeting!

[zyzhu]

Bump this thread as I stumbled upon a thread on Plotly website that the documentation of various languages including F# will be retired in November 2025. I replied on the thread to suggest linking the documentation to Plotly.net. Please consider that path so that newcomers can find the right resources on Plotly website.
https://community.plotly.com/t/retire-the-documentation-for-r-matlab-julia-and-f/94147/3