Get the arc42 Template

Ralf D. Müller

2 minutes to read

To work with docToolchain, you first need some documents. So let’s fetch the arc42 template for software architecture documentation.

docToolchain comes with a task called downloadTemplate. Let’s invoke it and see what happens.

Linux / WSL2 with bash
./dtcw downloadTemplate
Windows with Powershell
./dtcw.ps1 downloadTemplate
There is an interesting bug with the german version of the arc42 template in conjunction with running docToolchain in powershell:
The encoding of the files will be wrong. To fix that, just run ./dtcw.ps1 fixEncoding.
Result of downloadTemplate-Task
$ ./dtcw downloadTemplate
dtcw - docToolchain wrapper V0.24
docToolchain V2.0.0

Bash is running on WSL
this might cause problems with plantUML
see https://doctoolchain.github.io/docToolchain/#wsl for more details

Java Version 11
docker available
home folder exists
use local homefolder install /home/rdmueller/.doctoolchain/

> Configure project :
arc42/arc42.adoc

> Task :downloadTemplate
Install arc42 documentation template.
For more information about arc42 see https://arc42.org
[ant:input] Which language do you want to install? (EN, DE, ES, RU)
<-------------> 0% EXECUTING [6s]
[ant:input] Do you want the template with or without help? (withhelp, plain)
<-----<-------------> 0% EXECUTING [10s]
Download https://github.com/arc42/arc42-template/raw/master/dist/arc42-template-DE-withhelp-asciidoc.zip
arc42 template unpacked into /c/Users/ralfd/projects/dtc-tests/wsl/src/docs/arc42
added template to docToolchainConfig.groovy
use 'generateHTML', 'generatePDF' or  'generateSite' to convert the template

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 15s
1 actionable task: 1 executed

Out of the box, docToolchain only knows the open source arc42 template for software architecture. That’s why it doesn’t ask which template to install. Since the template exists in four different languages and with or without help on how to use it, docToolchain asks you for these two parameters. It then downloads the template right from the source, unzips it and reformats it a little bit to fit the needs of docToolchain. It also adds the template to your configuration file.

That’s it. You have now docToolchain with the arc42 template installed. Let’s render is as HTML, PDF or Microsite in the next steps.