IMP: updated README instructions for local builds

README.md

@@ -2,24 +2,38 @@ Welcome to the QIIME 2 developer docs!
 
 To contribute, follow these steps:
 
-1. Fork this repo     
-2. Clone your forked repo onto your computer     
-3. Make a new branch      
+1. Fork this repo
+2. Clone your forked repo onto your computer
+3. Make a new branch
    `git checkout -b informative-branch-name`
-4. Make and preview your edits                
-5. Commit and push your edits, and start a pull request        
+4. Make and preview your edits
+5. Commit and push your edits, and start a pull request
 
 # Previewing edits
 
 This documentation is built by [sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/), which you can also use to make a local copy of the docs to preview on your computer.
 
-First, you need to have all the requirements download. From the main repo, run
+First, you need to have all the required packages installed. Start by going to https://packages.qiime2.org/qiime2/<20XX.Y>/amplicon/released (where <20XX.Y> is the current release epoch).
+Check on the latest versions for qiime2 and q2cli (these are the two QIIME 2 packages you'll need in your conda environment).
+Create a new conda environment with the following packages/channels:
+
+```
+conda create -n dev-docs -c https://packages.qiime2.org/qiime2/<20XX.Y>/amplicon/released -c conda-forge -c bioconda -c defaults qiime2=<20XX.Y.ver> q2cli=<20XX.Y.ver> sphinx awscli
+```
+Where 20XX.Y is the current release epoch, and 20XX.Y.ver is the version found on packages.qiime2.org for qiime2 and q2cli, respectively.
+
+Once the environment has been created, you'll activate it with:
+```
+conda activate dev-docs
+```
+
+From the main dev-docs repo, run:
 
 ```
 pip install -r requirements.txt
 ```
 
-This should download sphinx (plus a few other dependencies). Note that you might want to run this in a qiime2 dev environment, to keep installs separate from your main computer.
+This will install any separate dependencies required outside of sphinx and awscli.
 
 To build the documentation and preview your changes, run
 

requirements.txt

@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 Sphinx
 awscli
+sphinx_tabs