Hello! I’d love to ask if we can add in screenshots to the Contributing page: Writing your first contribution for Django | Django documentation | Django
I’d love to see if I accurately installed and updated accordingly 
Please let me know what your thoughts are. Thanks!
Screenshots of what a successful installation of each dependency looks like. After running the command, python -m pip install -e /path/to/your/local/clone/django/, how does one know they correctly installed all the dependencies?
Thank you, @vmaineng, for thinking of ways to make Django (and its documentation) better!
I completely understand how screenshots could provide reassurance to readers following the tutorial, especially those who are new and want to confirm they’ve done everything correctly. That said, I’m a bit concerned about the long-term maintainability of including screenshots. Dependencies and tools tend to change more frequently than Django itself, which means screenshots could become outdated quickly. And without an automated way to generate or test them, keeping them up to date would require significant ongoing effort.
Do you have ideas for a more maintainable alternative that could offer similar reassurance to readers? something easier to keep updated over time?
This is a great question, Nessita.
Thank you for bringing this up and I agree the long-term maintainability of screenshots is not sustainable.
Perhaps instead of screenshots, could there be points to run commands to indicate if we are on the right path?
For example, to indicate a successful activation, your terminal prompt should have the environment name:
ex: (djangodev) user@computer:~$
I have an idea for more maintainable “screenshots” although I wouldn’t name them as such.
For one of my projects I patched Carlton’s django-sphinx-view and added extra Sphinx directives. They allow me to add Django code to the documentation which is rendered using the Python’s .. code-block::-styling and is added as an executable Django View directly inside the documentation.
This allows me to create an interactive documentation instead of a static screenshot. It moreover assures that the example code actually works. Most JavaScript projects nowadays offer such an interactive documentation and it’s sad, that the Django community still wants to rely on screenshots.
Here is one of many examples where I use this kind of interactive documentation.
I love how interactive this is! This provides me strong reassurance that I’m installing the correct items.