Some parts of the HBase Reference Guide, most notably Section 2.4, “Configuration Files”, are generated automatically, so that this area of the documentation stays in sync with the code. This is done by means of an XSLT transform, which you can examine in the source at src/main/xslt/configuration_to_docbook_section.xsl. This transforms the hbase-common/src/main/resources/hbase-default.xml file into a Docbook output which can be included in the Reference Guide. Sometimes, it is necessary to add configuration parameters or modify their descriptions. Make the modifications to the source file, and they will be included in the Reference Guide when it is rebuilt.

It is possible that other types of content can and will be automatically generated from HBase source files in the future.