backstage/mkdocs-monorepo-plugin

Note: This plugin is in beta. Whilst it is not expected to significantly change in functionality, it may not yet be fully compatible with other Mkdocs configuration and thus may break with some advanced configurations. Once these have been resolved and all bugs have been ironed out, we will move this to a stable release.

✚ This plugin enables you to build multiple sets of documentation in a single Mkdocs. It is designed to address writing documentation in Spotify's largest and most business-critical codebases (typically monoliths or monorepos).

✏️ Blog Post | 🐍 Python Package | ✚ Demo | 📕 Docs

Features

• Support for multiple docs/ folders in Mkdocs. Having a single docs/ folder in a large codebase is hard to maintain. Who owns which documentation? What code is it associated with? Bringing docs closer to the associated code enables you to update them better, as well as leverage folder-based features such as GitHub Codeowners.

• Support for multiple navigations. In Spotify, large repositories typically are split up by multiple owners. These are split by folders. By introducing multiple mkdocs.yml files along with multiple docs/ folder, each team can take ownership of their own navigation. This plugin then intelligently merges of the documentation together into a single repository.

• Support across multiple repositories. Using Git Submodules it is possible to merge documentation across multiple repositories into a single codebase dynamically.

• The same great Mkdocs developer experience. It is possible to run mkdocs serve in the root to merge all of your documentation together, or in a subfolder to build specific documentation. Autoreload still works as usual. No more using symlinks!

Install

It's easy to get started using PyPI and pip using Python:

$ pip install mkdocs-monorepo-plugin

Usage

Take a look in our sample project for an example implementation, or see what it looks like after running mkdocs build.

In general, this plugin introduces the !include syntax in your Mkdocs navigation structure and then merges them together.

# /mkdocs.yml
site_name: Cats API

nav:
  - Intro: 'index.md'
  - Authentication: 'authentication.md'
  - API:
    - v1: '!include ./v1/mkdocs.yml'
    - v2: '!include ./v2/mkdocs.yml'

plugins:
  - monorepo

# /src/v1/mkdocs.yml
site_name: versions/v1

nav:
  - Reference: "reference.md"
  - Changelog: "changelog.md"

# /src/v2/mkdocs.yml
site_name: versions/v2

nav:
  - Migrating to v2: "migrating.md"
  - Reference: "reference.md"
  - Changelog: "changelog.md"

Example Source Filetree

$ tree .

├── docs
│   ├── authentication.md
│   └── index.md
├── mkdocs.yml
├── v1
│   ├── docs
│   │   ├── changelog.md
│   │   └── reference.md
│   └── mkdocs.yml
└── v2
    ├── docs
    │   ├── changelog.md
    │   ├── migrating.md
    │   └── reference.md
    └── mkdocs.yml

5 directories, 10 files

Example Rendered Filetree

$ mkdocs build
$ tree ./site

├── 404.html
├── authentication
│   └── index.html
├── css
│   ├── base.css
│   ├── bootstrap-custom.min.css
│   └── font-awesome.min.css
├── fonts
│   ├── fontawesome-webfont.eot
│   ├── fontawesome-webfont.svg
│   ├── fontawesome-webfont.ttf
│   ├── fontawesome-webfont.woff
│   ├── fontawesome-webfont.woff2
│   ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.eot
│   ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.svg
│   ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.ttf
│   ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff
│   └── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff2
├── img
│   ├── favicon.ico
│   └── grid.png
├── index.html
├── js
│   ├── base.js
│   ├── bootstrap-3.0.3.min.js
│   └── jquery-1.10.2.min.js
├── sitemap.xml
├── sitemap.xml.gz
└── versions
    ├── v1
    │   ├── changelog
    │   │   └── index.html
    │   └── reference
    │       └── index.html
    └── v2
        ├── changelog
        │   └── index.html
        ├── migrating
        │   └── index.html
        └── reference
            └── index.html

13 directories, 28 files

Supported Versions

• Python 3 — 3.5, 3.6, 3.7
• Mkdocs 1.0.4 and above.

License

Released under the Apache 2.0 License. See here for more details.

Contributing

Check out our CONTRIBUTING for more details.