🟠 Doby’s ESA Pyxel Notes (Living Documentation)

This section contains my continuously updated personal documentation developed in the course of contributing to ESA Pyxel. The focus areas include documentation refinement, accessibility improvements, linguistic clarity, and Windows-specific onboarding processes. In addition to these areas, I actively contribute to the Pyxel codebase by iterating on existing functions and introducing new ones within the simulation pipeline, configuration handling, and error-reporting logic—aimed at improving stability, maintainability, and developer experience across environments.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is not official ESA documentation. It functions as a personal and evolving technical notebook.

Reference Links

🌀 Fork Management Workflow

The guiding principle of my repository management is to maintain the master branch as a clean reference state. All development occurs in short-lived, purpose-specific branches.

Procedure for synchronizing the fork:

git switch master
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

Once modifications are complete, the branch is pushed and a Merge Request (MR) is opened against esa/pyxel. This workflow ensures concise, traceable, and isolated changes.

💻 Local Development Workflow (Windows, CMD Environment)

My local environment setup relies on direct repository cloning without heavy integrated development environments. The workflow utilizes the Windows Command Prompt, Python, and iterative testing cycles. Development progresses through six conceptual phases:

Stability — Verification of current functionality.
Reduction — Identification and removal of redundancy.
Origin — Revisiting initial rationale and purpose.
Expansion — Exploration of new possibilities or directions.
Disruption — Intentional stress testing and boundary breaking.
Return — Restoration of structure and synthesis of findings.

The order of phases adapts to project needs. For instance: 2 → 4 → 5 → 2 → 1. This approach promotes deliberate evolution without losing systemic coherence.

📚 Documentation Build (Sphinx, Tox-managed)

The documentation build process is handled via tox to encapsulate the Sphinx environment. During preview builds, notebook execution is explicitly disabled to streamline iteration.

Initial setup:

.\.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install tox
tox -e docs

Subsequent previews:

.\.tox\docs\Scripts\sphinx-build -E -a -b html -D nb_execution_mode=off docs\source docs\html
start "" docs\html\index.html

🧰 Windows-Specific Considerations

The Windows Command Prompt interprets # as a command character rather than a comment marker.
The characters < and > serve as redirection operators and should be used cautiously in examples.
If sphinx-build is not recognized, reference the executable located at .tox\docs\Scripts\.

🪐 Contribution Log (Ongoing)

Entry format:

YYYY-MM-DD — <Area/Page> — <Summary> — <MR link>

Example entry:

2025-09-06 — Installation — Add Windows tip for optimized local preview; refine phrasing — View MR

📙 Merge Request Description Template (Documentation-Only)

Documentation-only modification.

- Added Windows-specific tip for building and previewing documentation without executing notebooks:
    sphinx-build -E -b html -D nb_execution_mode=off docs/source docs/html
- Refined language and consistency within the Installation page.

No source code alterations.

👾 Commit Message Convention

docs: <summary>
docs(<section>): <summary>

Examples:

docs(install): add Windows tip for optimized local preview; refine phrasing
docs(get-help): clarify references to issue tracker and support channels

✅ Pre-Push Verification Checklist

Local preview validated.
RST/Markdown syntax renders as intended.
Language is concise, accessible, and consistent.
All hyperlinks verified as functional.
New documentation properly integrated into the toctree.

🚀 Roadmap and Future Objectives

Develop a concise glossary for new contributors.
Expand contributions to include YAML configuration and Python source files.

Thank you for being here!✨🌈🦕