One of our biggest motivations towards moving to MarkDown wasn’t just switching to a more widely used language. We use the MyST parser look there for syntax.
Warning Please make sure you have forked the repository you are working on before following this guide as GitLab now creates an MR from your forked repo.
You can now edit documents online! Drive by editing is always a bonus no need to build the docs or have a huge time investment if you’re fixing a typo or language. How easy is it?
Let’s look at our Sources section on in the User Manual:
Maybe you’ve spotted an error? In the upper right you’ll see some useful buttons:
If you click on the first logo – which happens to be the logo for GitLab you’ll get a handy dropdown from there click Suggest edit.
This will take you to GitLabs single page editor if you then click Preview above the edit box you’ll get a live preview of the rendered document.
In order to create a merge request make your edits then click the commit changes button in the upper right
This will bring a popup that will automatically fill in a branch name please edit the commit messages as appropriate then hit submit.
Unfortunately there is no 80 character wrapping so you’ll have to be mindful of that once the branch is created the only way to edit after is by checking it out and re-pushing.
The branch will hang off of the main repository created this way that’s OK we’re aware and would rather have this feature available to us.
Thanks for posting this write up. I have used the editing for changes and it is a great way to make changes to the documentation. It is well worth spending a few minutes getting familiar with making changes this way.
The only thing to add is reviews and changes are separate commits which need to be squashed in the merge request. I cannot remember the exact details. It is not hard but it pays to double check things.
That’s only if you edit any changes online using the IDE which I didn’t talk about in my post I think that’s a topic on its own maybe.
You’re right though that if someone does do that the MR needs to be squashed and the commit message edited so it’s not crazy looking as the default is when the squash feature is used.
I just signed up to fix some egregious doc bugs. This does not work for me. I’ve followed the instructions an when I “Commit Changes” and edit my message in the popup, then click the “commit changes” button, all I get is “A file with this name doesn’t exist” And it is not clear to me where I should have changed the target branch. There’s no field with that name. What am I missing?
I’m not sure I’ve never hit that error before. You need to edit it at the bottom in order for it to make a merge request are you sure you’re not changing something else? What file are you trying to edit and what branch are you changing it to?
Trying to edit main/c-user/example_application.md
I get the “Edit file” window, with “Write” and “Preview” side-by-side. These windows extend to the bottom and there is nothing at the bottom below. I’m also unable to locate anywhere where I can enter a target branch name. Could you extend the recipe maybe with screen shots what to expect where? Thanks!
A direct link would have been nice for future reference.
I’ve fixed the description on how to do this please look at the top comment. GitLab seems to have fixed the interface and made it much nicer I hadn’t noticed.
I get a different “Commit changes” popup, without the “New branch” edit field. Are there additional conditions before I am allowed to edit docs and get the proper popup? I’m a fairly new user probably without much of karma/trust/points? If so, that should be stated up-front and rejected with a message saying “Sorry, edits require 42 trust points, you have only 3.”
You are getting this error because your rtems-docs fork is severely out of date. That file does not exist in your fork. You need to update your fork then try this edit.
Also, GitLab has no ‘trust’ mechanism like Discourse as it’s fundamentally different software. This isn’t a permission issue.
Please update your fork and try again and report back, thanks!
Maybe I’m doing something silly, but I read the title of this thread that I can point my browser at 43. Example Application — RTEMS Classic API Guide 7.1023b8c (8th January 2026) documentation and start editing files on the main branch (it says “main” and 7.10238bc under the RTEMS logo. Much like Wikipedia, where I also don’t need to download the whole database to fix a typo. Is this assumption wrong?
You are trying to edit a file with an out of date fork I do not know what else to tell you. This is not a wiki if you do not wish to edit online then edit locally and create an MR in the regular way. Thank you.
See, that was the missing information. It may be obvious to you, but not for someone who tries the instructions on the docs at docs.rtems.org/docs/main/c-user/example_application which is NOT one of my forks. Apparently this gets connected to my “fork” on gitlab.rtems.org, which is NOT obvious at all. Thanks for your patience in clearing this up.
