This page is part of the How to Publish a FHIR Implementation Guide (v1.1.0: Release) based on FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) R4. This is the current published version. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Using IG Publisher -go-publish

The steps below describe how to publish an implementation guide using IG Publisher. Perform these steps for each release of each IG you want to publish. You should have already set up your publication environment, and will need to be able to upload content to your website.

Prepare your Implementation Guide

1. Clone your IG repository to your local system.

    $ cd ~/src
    $ git clone git@github.com:ExampleOrg/my-ig.git
    $ cd my-ig
   

   (If the repo is already on your system, ensure all changes have been committed.)

2. Create a release branch of your IG repo and switch to it

   $ git checkout -b v1.0.0
   

3. Review your IG's ImplementationGuide resource (or sushi-config.yaml) and update as needed.

   • IG canonical aligns with your main publication location (e.g. http://example.org/ig/myig)
   • IG status (see Publication Status), releaseLabel (see IG Parameters), date (if explicitly set), and version elements are all correct for your published IG.
   • Dependencies (including the template specified in igi.ini) are up to date and set to specific versions.

4. Ensure you are starting from a known state.

   • Delete contents of your FHIR cache directory ~/.fhir, except for fhir-settings.json if it exists
   • Delete fsh-generated, input-cache, output, temp, and template directories from the IG project

   • Use the most current releases of IG tooling:

      $ ./_updatePublisher.sh
      $ npm update -g fsh-sushi
     

5. Create (or update) publication-request.json in your IG root directory, filling it out appropriately for your IG:

   {
      "package-id" : "org.example.myig",
      "version" : "1.0.0",
      "path" : "http://example.org/ig/myig/1.0.0",
      "mode" : "milestone",
      "status" : "release",
      "sequence" : "Releases",
      "desc" : "Initial release as presented at FHIR North.",
      "first" : true,
      "title" : "How to Publish a FHIR Implementation Guide",
      "ci-build" : "http://build.fhir.org/ig/ExampleOrg/myig",
      "category" : "Infrastructure",
      "introduction" : "An instructional guide showing how to use the HL7 IG Publisher's -go-publish feature to publish an implementation guide to a website."
   }
   

   This file is used to populate the publication feeds. Several elements are only for the first publication of an IG. See IG Publication Request Documentation for complete details, including some additional elements.

   Attribute	First  Only	Description
   package-id		The IG package id, matching the value from sushi-config.yaml or your ImplementationGuide resource
   version		The IG version, matching the value from sushi-config.yaml or your ImplementationGuide resource
   path		The permanent full URL at which the IG will be available. This must be of the form [canonical]/[label], where [canonical] is the canonical URL of your IG, and [label] is the version or another label for this release (e.g. "STU1").
   mode		One of: working (publish at path, but don't update which publication is "current"); milestone (publish at path and at the canonical, making this the "current" release); technical-correction (replace the content at path; if the content at path is the "current" release, replace the content at the canonical also)
   status		The IG release status, typically release, trial-use, draft, or normative (or other options); often matches the IG releaselabel.
   sequence		The release sequence, e.g. "Release 1," that this publication is part of; or, "Publication," "Release," or similar, if not using release sequences. This determines grouping on the history page.
   desc descmd		The description of the release shown on the IG history page, as plain text (desc), or as markdown (descmd). Markdown is read from the file specified using "@[filename.md]".
   changes		An optional relative link to a "Change Log" page in the IG
   first		Set to true on first publication of this IG; false or omit otherwise
   title	✓	The human readable name of the IG
   ci-build	✓	The location of the continuous integration build of the IG; often under http://build.fhir.org/ig/
   category	✓	A category for the guide; see the categories on the FHIR registry.
   introduction	✓	A human readable description of the intent of the IG; shown on the IG history page.

6. Ensure you can do a clean build of the IG.

   $ ./_genonce.sh
   

   Check the build command-line output and output/qa.html for errors and warnings, and correct if needed.

Do a Publication Run and Upload

1. If you haven't already, create a branch of the ig-registry repo.

   $ cd ~/src/ig-registry
   $ git checkout -b example-org-igs
   

2. Switch to the the publication directory. Ensure you have a current copy of the IG Publisher.

   $ cd ~/src/publication
   $ curl -L https://github.com/HL7/fhir-ig-publisher/releases/latest/download/publisher.jar -o ~/src/publisher.jar
   

3. Run the IG Publisher in "publish" mode:

   $ cd ~/src/publication
   $ java -jar ../publisher.jar -go-publish \
      -source    /home/username/src/my-ig \
      -web       /home/username/src/publication/webroot \
      -history   /home/username/src/ig-history \
      -registry  /home/username/src/ig-registry/fhir-ig-list.json \
      -temp      /home/username/src/publication/temp \
      -templates /home/username/src/publication/templates
   

   Files or directories must either be under the publication directory or specified using an absolute path.

   • source - the IG to publish
   • web - the base staging directory to put the generated files into
   • history - the source directory for the history templates
   • registry - the IG registry list file to update with information about this publication
   • temp - a temporary storage location
   • templates - your customization files for the generated history, etc.

   Running -go-publish may build your IG multiple times as part of the process.

4. Run the Jekyll web server and review the generated IG.

   $ jekyll server -s webroot
   

   The IG is accessible at http://127.0.0.1:4000.

5. Upload the contents of the webroot directory to your website (http://example.org/ig), and review the publication.

You have now published your IG to your website.

Commit changes

Once you are confident that the website is updated correctly, commit your changes.

1. The publication process updates the list of publications known to the general FHIR tooling. In the ig-registry repo:

   1. Find the entry for your IG in fhir-ig-list.json, and update the missing information (shown as "??"). Fill in description, authority (your organization, or omit for personal sites), and country (two letter country codes).

   2. Commit the changes, push the changes upstream, and make a pull request to merge the changes back to the FHIR/ig-registry repo. Once these changes are accepted, FHIR ecosystem tooling will be aware of your IG publication.

2. Typically, you'll now want to commit two versions of your implementation guide to your repo.

   1. Commit the as-published version of your IG, and tag it.

      Tagging your release is an important best practice that will enable you to come back to this version should you ever need to republish, or issue an update.

   2. Commit a version of your IG ready for the next round of development, and commit. To update your IG for further development,

      • In your ImplementationGuide resource (or sushi-config.yaml), update the status, releaseLabel, and version elements as appropriate for the CI build; and revert dependencies to use the current version, if desired (also, the template version in ig.ini).
      • Remove first-time elements from publication-request.json, and update other elements in preparation for the next release.
      • Commit the changes to your implementation guide repo.

3. If you are storing the publication website in a repository, you may wish to commit the contents of the publication directory.

Directory structure

Assuming you were publishing your IG with a release label of "1.0.0" as the current publication, then, at the end of this process, you should have a directory structure like:

📁 .
└─ 📁 myig (or your IG)
   └─ ...
└─ 📁 fhir-web-templates (can be deleted)
   └─ ...
└─ 📁 ig-history
   └─ ...
└─ 📁 ig-registry
   └─ ...
└─ 📁 publication
   └─ 📁 webroot
      └─ package-feed.xml
      └─ package-registry.json
      └─ publication-feed.xml
      └─ publish-setup.json
      └─ 📁 myig
         └─ (contents of the published "current" IG)
         └─ 📁 1.0.0
            └─ (contents of the published "1.0.0" IG)
   └─ 📁 temp
      └─ ...
   └─ 📁 templates
      └─ header.template
      └─ index.template
      └─ postamble.template
      └─ preamble.template
      └─ searchform.template.html

The contents of the myig and 1.0.0 directories will be (almost) the same.

To see the impact of additional publications, you can update the version of your IG in the ImplementationGuide resource (or sushi-config.yaml), and in publication-request.json (and the other changes from the first section of this page), and run the -go-publish process again.