Docs: Contributing changes (#17551)

A few minor changes for contribution:

1) Updating link to say "Contributing" rather than "Developer's guide"
2) Minor changes after going through the contributing documentation
page.

.github/CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -3,43 +3,4 @@
 Hi there! Thank you for even being interested in contributing to LangChain.
 As an open-source project in a rapidly developing field, we are extremely open to contributions, whether they involve new features, improved infrastructure, better documentation, or bug fixes.
 
-To learn about how to contribute, please follow the [guides here](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/)
-
-## 🗺️ Guidelines
-
-### 👩‍💻 Ways to contribute
-
-There are many ways to contribute to LangChain. Here are some common ways people contribute:
-
-- [**Documentation**](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/documentation): Help improve our docs, including this one!
-- [**Code**](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/code): Help us write code, fix bugs, or improve our infrastructure.
-- [**Integrations**](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/integrations): Help us integrate with your favorite vendors and tools.
-
-### 🚩GitHub Issues
-
-Our [issues](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/issues) page is kept up to date with bugs, improvements, and feature requests.
-
-There is a taxonomy of labels to help with sorting and discovery of issues of interest. Please use these to help organize issues.
-
-If you start working on an issue, please assign it to yourself.
-
-If you are adding an issue, please try to keep it focused on a single, modular bug/improvement/feature.
-If two issues are related, or blocking, please link them rather than combining them.
-
-We will try to keep these issues as up-to-date as possible, though
-with the rapid rate of development in this field some may get out of date.
-If you notice this happening, please let us know.
-
-### 🙋Getting Help
-
-Our goal is to have the simplest developer setup possible. Should you experience any difficulty getting setup, please
-contact a maintainer! Not only do we want to help get you unblocked, but we also want to make sure that the process is
-smooth for future contributors.
-
-In a similar vein, we do enforce certain linting, formatting, and documentation standards in the codebase.
-If you are finding these difficult (or even just annoying) to work with, feel free to contact a maintainer for help -
-we do not want these to get in the way of getting good code into the codebase.
-
-### Contributor Documentation
-
-To learn about how to contribute, please follow the [guides here](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/)
+To learn how to contribute to LangChain, please follow the [contribution guide here](https://python.langchain.com/docs/contributing/).

Makefile

@@ -15,7 +15,12 @@ docs_build:
 	docs/.local_build.sh
 
 docs_clean:
-	rm -r _dist
+	@if [ -d _dist ]; then \
+			rm -r _dist; \
+			echo "Directory _dist has been cleaned."; \
+	else \
+			echo "Nothing to clean."; \
+	fi
 
 docs_linkcheck:
 	poetry run linkchecker _dist/docs/ --ignore-url node_modules

docs/api_reference/create_api_rst.py

@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@ from pydantic import BaseModel
 ROOT_DIR = Path(__file__).parents[2].absolute()
 HERE = Path(__file__).parent
 
-
 ClassKind = Literal["TypedDict", "Regular", "Pydantic", "enum"]
 
 
@@ -323,30 +322,52 @@ def _package_dir(package_name: str = "langchain") -> Path:
 
 
 def _get_package_version(package_dir: Path) -> str:
-    with open(package_dir.parent / "pyproject.toml", "r") as f:
-        pyproject = toml.load(f)
+    """Return the version of the package."""
+    try:
+        with open(package_dir.parent / "pyproject.toml", "r") as f:
+            pyproject = toml.load(f)
+    except FileNotFoundError as e:
+        print(
+            f"pyproject.toml not found in {package_dir.parent}.\n"
+            "You are either attempting to build a directory which is not a package or "
+            "the package is missing a pyproject.toml file which should be added."
+            "Aborting the build."
+        )
+        exit(1)
     return pyproject["tool"]["poetry"]["version"]
 
 
-def _out_file_path(package_name: str = "langchain") -> Path:
+def _out_file_path(package_name: str) -> Path:
     """Return the path to the file containing the documentation."""
     return HERE / f"{package_name.replace('-', '_')}_api_reference.rst"
 
 
-def _doc_first_line(package_name: str = "langchain") -> str:
+def _doc_first_line(package_name: str) -> str:
     """Return the path to the file containing the documentation."""
     return f".. {package_name.replace('-', '_')}_api_reference:\n\n"
 
 
 def main() -> None:
     """Generate the api_reference.rst file for each package."""
+    print("Starting to build API reference files.")
     for dir in os.listdir(ROOT_DIR / "libs"):
+        # Skip any hidden directories
+        # Some of these could be present by mistake in the code base
+        # e.g., .pytest_cache from running tests from the wrong location.
+        if not dir.startswith("."):
+            print("Skipping dir:", dir)
+            continue
+
         if dir in ("cli", "partners"):
             continue
         else:
+            print("Building package:", dir)
             _build_rst_file(package_name=dir)
-    for dir in os.listdir(ROOT_DIR / "libs" / "partners"):
+    partner_packages = os.listdir(ROOT_DIR / "libs" / "partners")
+    print("Building partner packages:", partner_packages)
+    for dir in partner_packages:
         _build_rst_file(package_name=dir)
+    print("API reference files built.")
 
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":

docs/docs/contributing/documentation.mdx

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Similar to linting, we recognize documentation can be annoying. If you do not wa
 ### Install dependencies
 
 - [Quarto](https://quarto.org) - package that converts Jupyter notebooks (`.ipynb` files) into mdx files for serving in Docusaurus.
-- `poetry install` from the monorepo root
+- `poetry install --with lint,docs --no-root` from the monorepo root.
 
 ### Building
 
@@ -49,7 +49,6 @@ make api_docs_linkcheck
 The docs are linted from the monorepo root. To lint the docs, run the following from there:
 
 ```bash
-poetry install --with lint,typing
 make lint
 ```
 

docs/docs/contributing/index.mdx

@@ -15,8 +15,9 @@ There are many ways to contribute to LangChain. Here are some common ways people
 - [**Documentation**](./documentation.mdx): Help improve our docs, including this one!
 - [**Code**](./code.mdx): Help us write code, fix bugs, or improve our infrastructure.
 - [**Integrations**](integrations.mdx): Help us integrate with your favorite vendors and tools.
+- [**Discussions**](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/discussions): Help answer usage questions and discuss issues with users.
 
-### 🚩GitHub Issues
+### 🚩 GitHub Issues
 
 Our [issues](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/issues) page is kept up to date with bugs, improvements, and feature requests.
 
@@ -31,7 +32,13 @@ We will try to keep these issues as up-to-date as possible, though
 with the rapid rate of development in this field some may get out of date.
 If you notice this happening, please let us know.
 
-### 🙋Getting Help
+### 💭 GitHub Discussions
+
+We have a [discussions](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/discussions) page where users can ask usage questions, discuss design decisions, and propose new features.
+
+If you are able to help answer questions, please do so! This will allow the maintainers to spend more time focused on development and bug fixing.
+
+### 🙋 Getting Help
 
 Our goal is to have the simplest developer setup possible. Should you experience any difficulty getting setup, please
 contact a maintainer! Not only do we want to help get you unblocked, but we also want to make sure that the process is

docs/docusaurus.config.js

@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ const config = {
               },
               {
                 to: "/docs/contributing",
-                label: "Developer's guide",
+                label: "Contributing",
               },
               {
                 type: "docSidebar",