Ebook for Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

What is this?

This is the repo for a bunch of tips and tricks on Visual Studio. Everybody can participate. Every checkin will trigger a build of an ebook. The ebook will have EPUB format and will be available for download freely. Currently this is a very early state. Besides however this was my playground for setting up CI/CD for epub using VSTS. I just wanted to know if I can make things work and needed some kind of content to get started.

Can I participate?

Yes, absolutly. Your GitHub Name will be listed in the Author section of the ebook, once your Pull Request has been acceppted.

Why does this project exist?

This is a longer story. Here's the short one.

1. I belive in books and written knowledge.
2. I belive in communities and in sharing knowledge. I profited from this a lot in the past. This is another way to say "Thank you" and to give something back.
3. I think a traditional approach to write books on technical documentation is outdated - the wheel is just turning too fast. We have to be more flexible when it comes to updating and editing.
4. I liked the idea of treating technical documentation in a CI/CD way. And I was curious if I could make VSTS build and publish and Epub Ebook. Turns out I could.

Will you share the details on how to set up CI/CD for e-books?

Yes. Once it's working I'll write a blog post or something similar on it. All the magic is currently done in Team Services and all the code can be found in this repo.

Where can I find the ebook?

Here: https://github.com/DanielMeixner/ebook-visual-studio-tips/releases

There isn't too much content in the book yet.

I know. I'm working on it. Currently my focus was on setting up CI/CD and have some kind of epub-creation. Feel free to send PRs!

Guidlines

• Fork the repo.
• Check out the dev branch.
• Create a folder for your tip in the content subfolder.
• Add images for your tip in a images subfolder within your tip's folder. Use png only for images.
• Write your tip in markdown.
• Be short and precise. Add an "Description" and a "Guidance" chapter - as shown in the samples.
• You can also simply copy and paste the folder in the template subfoder and get started from there.
• Send out a pull request.
• Currently I will be reviewing your tip and I have to push the button to build manually. This is just during this early phase. CI/CD could be enabled with a flick of a switch but I have to improve stability and the review process first.

Current Limitations:

• Use *.png images only
• Place your content in a folder which will be the name of your chapter. Do not use whitespaces.
• Table of content is broken.