A platform for storing and organising information and documentation. Details for BookStack can be found on the official website at https://www.bookstackapp.com/.
BookStack is an opinionated wiki system that provides a pleasant and simple out-of-the-box experience. New users to an instance should find the experience intuitive and only basic word-processing skills should be required to get involved in creating content on BookStack. The platform should provide advanced power features to those that desire it but they should not interfere with the core simple user experience.
In regard to development philosophy, BookStack has a relaxed, open & positive approach. At the end of the day this is free software developed and maintained by people donating their own free time.
Below is a high-level road map view for BookStack to provide a sense of direction of where the project is going. This can change at any point and does not reflect many features and improvements that will also be included as part of the journey along this road map. For more granular detail of what will be included in upcoming releases you can review the project milestones as defined in the "Release Process" section below.
- *A REST API covering, at minimum, control of core content models (Books, Chapters, Pages) for automation and platform extension.*
- **Editor Alignment & Review**
- *Review the page editors with goal of achieving increased interoperability & feature parity while also considering collaborative editing potential.*
- **Permission System Review**
- *Improvement in how permissions are applied and a review of the efficiency of the permission & roles system.*
- **Installation & Deployment Process Revamp**
- *Creation of a streamlined & secure process for users to deploy & update BookStack with reduced development requirements (No git or composer requirement).*
BookStack releases are each assigned a date-based version number in the format `v<year>.<month>[.<optional_patch_number>]`. For example:
-`v20.12` - New feature released launched during December 2020.
-`v21.06.2` - Second patch release upon the June 2021 feature release.
Patch releases are generally fairly minor, primarily intended for fixes and therefore is fairly unlikely to cause breakages upon update.
Feature releases are generally larger, bringing new features in addition to fixes and enhancements. These releases have a greater chance of introducing breaking changes upon update, so it's worth checking for any notes in the [update guide](https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/updates/).
Each BookStack release will have a [milestone](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/milestones) created with issues & pull requests assigned to it to define what will be in that release. Milestones are built up then worked through until complete at which point, after some testing and documentation updates, the release will be deployed.
Feature releases, and some patch releases, will be accompanied by a post on the [BookStack blog](https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/) which will provide additional detail on features, changes & updates otherwise the [GitHub release page](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/releases) will show a list of changes. You can sign up to be alerted to new BookStack blogs posts (once per week maximum) [at this link](https://updates.bookstackapp.com/signup/bookstack-news-and-updates).
All development on BookStack is currently done on the master branch. When it's time for a release the master branch is merged into release with built & minified CSS & JS then tagged at its version. Here are the current development requirements:
This project uses SASS for CSS development and this is built, along with the JavaScript, using a range of npm scripts. The below npm commands can be used to install the dependencies & run the build tasks:
BookStack has many integration tests that use Laravel's built-in testing capabilities which makes use of PHPUnit. There is a `mysql_testing` database defined within the app config which is what is used by PHPUnit. This database is set with the database name, user name and password all defined as `bookstack-test`. You will have to create that database and that set of credentials before testing.
This repository ships with a Docker Compose configuration intended for development purposes. It'll build a PHP image with all needed extensions installed and start up a MySQL server and a Node image watching the UI assets.
To get started, make sure you meet the following requirements:
- Docker and Docker Compose are installed
- Your user is part of the `docker` group
If all the conditions are met, you can proceed with the following steps:
1.**Copy `.env.example` to `.env`**, change `APP_KEY` to a random 32 char string and set `APP_ENV` to `local`.
2. Make sure **port 8080 is unused***or else* change `DEV_PORT` to a free port on your host.
3.**Run `chgrp -R docker storage`**. The development container will chown the `storage` directory to the `www-data` user inside the container so BookStack can write to it. You need to change the group to your host's `docker` group here to not lose access to the `storage` directory.
The docker-compose setup runs an instance of [MailHog](https://github.com/mailhog/MailHog) and sets environment variables to redirect any BookStack-sent emails to MailHog. You can view this mail via the MailHog web interface on `localhost:8025`. You can change the port MailHog is accessible on by setting a `DEV_MAIL_PORT` environment variable.
The docker-compose setup ships with Xdebug, which you can listen to on port 9090.
NB : For some editors like Visual Studio Code, you might need to map your workspace folder to the /app folder within the docker container for this to work.
Translations for text within BookStack is managed through the [BookStack project on Crowdin](https://crowdin.com/project/bookstack). Some strings have colon-prefixed variables in such as `:userName`. Leave these values as they are as they will be replaced at run-time. Crowdin is the preferred way to provide translations, otherwise the raw translations files can be found within the `resources/lang` path.
If you'd like a new language to be added to Crowdin, for you to be able to provide translations for, please [open a new issue here](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/issues/new?template=language_request.md).
Please note, translations in BookStack are provided to the "Crowdin Global Translation Memory" which helps BookStack and other projects with finding translations. If you are not happy with contributing to this then providing translations to BookStack, even manually via GitHub, is not advised.
Pull requests are welcome. Unless a small tweak or language update, It may be best to open the pull request early or create an issue for your intended change to discuss how it will fit in to the project and plan out the merge. Just because a feature request exists, or is tagged, does not mean that feature would be accepted into the core project.
Pull requests should be created from the `master` branch since they will be merged back into `master` once done. Please do not build from or request a merge into the `release` branch as this is only for publishing releases. If you are looking to alter CSS or JavaScript content please edit the source files found in `resources/`. Any CSS or JS files within `public` are built from these source files and therefore should not be edited directly.
Security information for administering a BookStack instance can be found on the [documentation site here](https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/security/).
If you'd like to be notified of new potential security concerns you can [sign-up to the BookStack security mailing list](https://updates.bookstackapp.com/signup/bookstack-security-updates).
If you would like to report a security concern, details of doing so can [can be found here](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/blob/master/.github/SECURITY.md).
We want BookStack to remain accessible to as many people as possible. We aim for at least WCAG 2.1 Level A standards where possible although we do not strictly test this upon each release. If you come across any accessibility issues please feel free to open an issue.
The wonderful people that have provided translations, either through GitHub or via Crowdin [can be seen here](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/blob/master/.github/translators.txt).
