Proposals for changes to the matrix specification
You cannot select more than 25 topics Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
Go to file
Travis Ralston 52cd88f070 Rewrite readme and update contributor docs
Incorporates https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/3025/
3 years ago
.buildkite Update prod build's baseURL to /unstable (#3035) 3 years ago
.circleci Update CircleCI and Buildkite configs to build the new spec (#3017) 3 years ago
.github Update idea.md 3 years ago
assets-hugo Opt for serving new spec JS/CSS dependencies locally instead of downloading from CDNs (#3036) 3 years ago
attic Move drafts to attic to reduce confusion 3 years ago
changelogs Add changelog 3 years ago
content Merge pull request #3002 from wbamberg/fix-h7-h8 3 years ago
data Fix example MXC URI for m.presence 3 years ago
data-definitions Update i18n 3 years ago
layouts Attempt to fix broken breadcrumb links 3 years ago
meta Rewrite readme and update contributor docs 3 years ago
proposals Merge pull request #2312 from quotient-im/kitsune/matrix-uri 3 years ago
scripts Update CircleCI and Buildkite configs to build the new spec (#3017) 3 years ago
specification Merge pull request #2536 from uhoreg/cross-signing-spec 4 years ago
static Write font files as binary instead of text (#3039) 3 years ago
themes Opt for serving new spec JS/CSS dependencies locally instead of downloading from CDNs (#3036) 3 years ago
.gitignore Rewrite readme and update contributor docs 3 years ago
.gitmodules Opt for serving new spec JS/CSS dependencies locally instead of downloading from CDNs (#3036) 3 years ago
CONTRIBUTING.rst Rewrite readme and update contributor docs 3 years ago
LICENSE Add a license to the spec 8 years ago
README.md Rewrite readme and update contributor docs 3 years ago
config-circleci.toml Update CircleCI and Buildkite configs to build the new spec (#3017) 3 years ago
config.toml Set canonifyURLs to true (#3037) 3 years ago
openapi_extensions.md Move raw API and event schemas into /data directory 3 years ago
package-lock.json Bump y18n from 4.0.0 to 4.0.1 3 years ago
package.json Support rendering of proposal tables 3 years ago
pyproject.toml Update CircleCI and Buildkite configs to build the new spec (#3017) 3 years ago

README.md

Matrix Specification

This repository contains the Matrix Specification, rendered at spec.matrix.org.

Developers looking to use Matrix should join #matrix-dev:matrix.org on Matrix for help.

Spec authors and proposal writers are welcome to join #matrix-spec:matrix.org. We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.rst for details.

Structure

The Matrix spec is compiled with Hugo (a static site generator) with the following structure:

  • /assets: assets that need postprocessing using Hugo Pipes. For example, Sass files would go here.

  • /content: files that will become pages in the site go here. Typically these are Markdown files with some YAML front matter indicating, among other things, what layout should be applied to this page. The organization of files under /content determines the organization of pages in the built site.

  • /data: this can contain TOML, YAML, or JSON files. Files kept here are directly available to template code as data objects, so templates don't need to load them from a file and parse them. This is also where our

  • /layouts: this contains Hugo templates. Some templates define the overall layout of a page: for example, whether it has header, footer, sidebar, and so on.

    • /layouts/partials: these templates can be called from other templates, so they can be used to factor out template code that's used in more than one template. An obvious example here is something like a sidebar, where several different page layouts might all include the sidebar. But also, partial templates can return values: this means they can be used like functions, that can be called by multiple templates to do some common processing.
    • /layouts/shortcodes: these templates can be called directly from files in /content.
  • /static: static files which don't need preprocessing. JS or CSS files could live here.

  • /themes: you can use just Hugo or use it with a theme. Themes primarily provide additional templates, which are supplied in a /themes/$theme_name/layouts directory. You can use a theme but customise it by providing your own versions of any of the them layouts in the base /layouts directory. That is, if a theme provides /themes/$theme_name/layouts/sidebar.html and you provide /layouts/sidebar.html, then your version of this template will be used.

It also has the following top-level file:

  • config.toml: site-wide configuration settings. Some of these are built-in and you can add your own. Config settings defined here are available in templates. All these directories above are configurable via config.toml settings.

Additionally, the following directories may be of interest:

  • /attic: Here contains historical sections of specification and legacy drafts for the specification.
  • /changelogs: Various bits of changelog for the specification areas.
  • /event-schemas: JSON Schema definitions for the spec.
  • /data-definitions: Bits of structured data consumable by Matrix implementations.
  • /meta: Documentation relating to the spec's processes that are otherwise untracked (release instructions, etc).
  • /scripts: Various scripts for generating the spec.
  • /proposals: Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. See https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/proposals/.
  • /api: OpenAPI / Swagger definitions for the spec.

Authoring changes to the spec

Please read CONTRIBUTING.rst before authoring a change to the spec. Note that spec authoring takes place after an MSC has been accepted, not as part of a proposal itself.

  1. Install the extended version (often the OS default) of Hugo: https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing
  2. Run git submodule update --init --recursive for good measure.
  3. Run npm i to install the dependencies. Note that this will require NodeJS to be installed.
  4. Run npm run get-proposals to seed the proposals data. This is not required.
  5. Run hugo serve to run a local webserver which builds whenever a file change is detected. If watching doesn't appear to be working for you, try hugo serve --disableFastRender instead.
  6. Edit the specification 🙂

We use a highly customized Docsy theme for our generated site, which uses Bootstrap and Font Awesome. If you're looking at making design-related changes to the spec site, please coordinate with us in #matrix-docs:matrix.org before opening a PR.

Building the specification

If for some reason you're not a CI/CD system and want to render the spec yourself, follow the above steps for authoring changes to the specification and instead of hugo serve run hugo -d "spec" - this will generate the spec to /spec. If you'd like to serve the spec off a path instead of a domain root (eg: /unstable), add --baseURL "/unstable" to the hugo -d "spec" command.

For building the swagger definitions, create a python3 virtualenv and activate it. Then run pip install -r ./scripts/requirements.txt and finally python ./scripts/dump-swagger.py to generate it to ./scripts/swagger/api-docs.json. To make use of the generated file, there are a number of options:

Issue tracking

Specification issues are tracked on github at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues.

See meta/github-labels.rst for information on what the labels mean.