When writing documentation for GNOME, it’s essential to be running the latest version. GNOME Continuous provides a ready-to-boot virtual machine image containing much of the GNOME stack straight from git. As a bonus, Boxes will open and run the image as soon as it’s downloaded. (In Fedora 20 it’s necessary to sidestep this bug but Colin’s installation instructions reflect this.)

When the image is up and running in Boxes, you can use jhbuild to install additional apps, as documented by Andreas… I use this procedure to add Yelp. You can also try setting it up for external network connections as detailed in Ben Kahn’s blog entry.