mkdocs-multirepo-plugin 0.4.5

Build documentation in multiple repos into one site.

mkdocs-multirepo-plugin

Build documentation in multiple repos into one site.

If you like this plugin and want me to continue maintaining it in my free time, please buy me a 🍺!

Features

• Distributed Documentation: Keep docs close to the code but findable on one site.
• Seperates Concerns: Separate documentation from other files that go into building your mkdocs site (e.g., theme overrides).
• Fast: Documentation is imported asynchronously, using asyncio.
• Simple: All configuration is done within the plugins or nav sections of your mkdocs.yml file.
• Use in Production: The plugin can be used in a CI/CD pipeline.

OS Support

Dependencies

Newer versions of Git preferred.

Setup

Install plugin using pip:

pip install mkdocs-multirepo-plugin

Next, add the plugin to your mkdocs.yml

plugins:
  - multirepo

The plugin introduces the !import statement in your config's nav section. You can now use the import statement to add a documentation section, where the docs are pulled from the source repo.

!import Statement Sections

• {url}: Only required part of !import statement (e.g., https://github.com/{user}/{repo name}).
• branch={branch}: Tells multirepo what branch to use. Defaults to master if not supplied.
• docs_dir={path}: The path to the docs directory for the section. Defaults to docs/* (a glob) if not supplied.
• multi_docs={True | False}: If set to True, all docs directories will be imported (more info here).
• config={filename}.yml: Tells multirepo the name of the config file, containing configuration for the plugin. The default value is also mkdocs.yml. This config file can live within the docs directory or in the parent directory.
• extra_imports=["{filename | path | glob}"]: Use this if you want to import additional directories or files along with the docs.

nav:
  - Home: 'index.md'
  - MicroService: '!import {url}?branch={branch}&docs_dir={path}&multi_docs={True | False}&config={filename}.yml'

MicroService mkdocs.yml (located within the docs directory or the parent directory)

edit_uri: /blob/master/

nav:
  - Home: index.md

Things to Note:

• If using !import in the nav, the imported repo must have a mkdocs.yml (or another filename with a ?config={filename}.yml) file with a nav section located in either the docs directory or the root directory.
• nav takes precedence over repos (see below).
• {path} can also be a glob (e.g., docs/*).

If you'd prefer MkDocs to build the site nav based on the directory structure, you can define your other repos within the plugins section.

Note: Cleanup should be set to false when developing (i.e., when calling mkdocs serve). This will prevent importing repos multiple times with livereload.

plugins:
  - search
  - multirepo:
      # (optional) tells multirepo to cleanup the temporary directory after site is built.
      cleanup: true
      repos:
        - section: Backstage
          # you can define the edit uri path
          import_url: 'https://github.com/backstage/backstage?edit_uri=/blob/master/'
        - section: Monorepo
          import_url: 'https://github.com/backstage/mkdocs-monorepo-plugin?edit_uri=/blob/master/'
        - section: 'Techdocs-cli'
          # note that the branch is still specified in the url
          import_url: 'https://github.com/backstage/techdocs-cli?branch=main&edit_uri=/blob/main/'
        - section: FastAPI
          import_url: 'https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi?docs_dir=docs/en/docs/*'
        - section: Monorepo Multi Docs
          import_url: https://github.com/backstage/mkdocs-monorepo-plugin?multi_docs=True&docs_dir=sample-docs/*
        - section: 'Django REST'
          import_url: 'https://github.com/encode/django-rest-framework'
        - section: 'Cookiecutter Pypackage'
          import_url: 'https://github.com/zillionare/cookiecutter-pypackage'
        - section: 'Pydantic'
          import_url: 'https://github.com/samuelcolvin/pydantic'

Once you're done configuring, run either mkdocs serve or mkdocs build. This will import the docs into a temporary directory and build the site.

Additional Features

α Multiple Docs Directories in Imported Repo (Alpha)

If an imported repo is a monorepo (i.e., has multiple docs directories), multirepo automatically includes them in the site when multi_docs is set to True.

Suppose Microservice's directory structure is this.

├───mkdocs.yml (required if nav section is defined)
├───README.md
├───project1
│   └───src
│   └───docs
│       └───assets
|         index.md
|         technical.md
├───project2
│   └───src
│   └───docs
│         index.md

By default, this directory turns into this.

├───mkdocs.yml (required if nav section is defined)
├───README.md
├───project1
│   └───assets
|     index.md
|     technical.md
├───project2
│     index.md

Note:

• If using the nav !import statement, make sure the nav paths reflect the new directory structure, which doesn't include docs directories.
• edit_urls will still map to underlying markdown file based on the actual directory structure in the remote's repository.

Use in CI/CD

If you want to use the plugin within Azure Pipelines or Github Actions, you'll need to define an AccessToken environment variable for the mkdocs build step. The AccessToken should have access to clone all repos.

Azure Pipeline Step Example

- script: |
    source ./env/bin/activate
    mkdocs build
  env:
    AccessToken: $(System.AccessToken)
  displayName: 'Build MkDocs Site'

β Development in Imported Repos (Beta)

For mkdocs serve to work properly in an imported repo (a repo that is imported in the parent site), you will need to add the multirepo plugin within the imported repo as well as the parent repo, including the following configuration.

Notes:

• You will also need to have plugins and packages the parent repo uses installed within your local venv.
• See documentation on the set git command for sparse-checkout if you are confused with what dirs can contain.

plugins:
  multirepo:
    imported_repo: true
    url: https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material
    section_name: Backstage
    # directories and files needed for building the site
    # any path in docs will be included. For example, index.md is the
    # homepage of the parent site
    dirs: ["material/*", "mkdocs.yml", "docs/index.md"]
    custom_dir: material
    yml_file: mkdocs.yml # this can also be a relative path
    branch: master

Writers can now run mkdocs serve within their local repo, using the main site's configuration, custom theming and features. This means all development is distributed, without technical writers having to switch repos.

Examples

• Multirepo with Mcdocstrings

Contributing

You'll need to install Poetry and Git to contribute and run tests locally.

Setup

Assumes you have poetry installed and in your path

> poetry install > poetry shell

Running Tests

Tests were modeled off of mkdocs-monorepo-plugin. To run the test suite you'll need:

• Python
• Git
• Docker
• MkDocs

Integration Testing

The command below will use Docker to run our test suites in numerous Python versions. It may take some time on first run, but should be very fast afterwards. When you're done, feel free to run docker prune to clear them from your local cache. We use the slim versions of the public python images from Docker Hub.

$ ./__tests__/test.sh

For faster tests, you can opt to run in Python 3.7 rather than all supported Python versions:

$ PYTHON_37_ONLY=1 ./__tests__/test.sh

Unit Testing

$ python[3] -m unittest tests.unittests