MkDocs HCL Container image

Objective

Create and maintain a container (a.k.a. Docker) image having all MKDocs Material customizations HCL Labs and friends found useful. It supports both local run and is used in the HCL internal Jenkins pipelines. It also contains the version preprocessor to generate multiple versions that differ only in the specified delta

Projects using the template

• HCL Volt MX Go
• HCL Domino REST API

Multi-Version build

The image now contains our mkdocs-preprocessor which allows to comfortably maintain documentation versions for software version without duplicating sources.

Build result

The build creates 2 flavors:

• Intel for local run
• M1 (Apple) for local run

The resulting container is available in our Github repository.

MKDocs plugins used

• mkdocs-awesome-pages-plugin
• mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin
• mike
• mkdocs-markdownextradata-plugin
• mkdocs-git-authors-plugin

Local building

The images are built by GitHub, so typically, you don't need to build them locally.

Run ./makedocker.sh for Intel or ./makedockerM1.sh for Mac M1 in the project root directory. It will create the respecitve images:

• For Intel: ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:latest
• For Mac M1: ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:m1

Local usage

We presume you follow the convention to keep your documentation in the /docs directory. Navigate to your project root directory and run:

• For Mac M1: docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v ${PWD}:/docs ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:m1 $1 $2 $3
• For Intel / Linux: docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v ${PWD}:/docs ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:latest $1 $2 $3

Replace $1, $2, $3 with valid mkdocs commands or omit them.

Command files

Copy the docs or docsM1 file to ~/bin ( you have that in your path, isn't it?), and you can enjoy quick launch by typing docs in your project root directory.

Sample MKDocs setup file

Check the samples directory for mkdocs.yml.

YMMV

mkdocs-preprocessor

Make documentation versions painless with MKDocs

Problem statement

Documentation needs to cover multiple software versions. A large number of pages apply to all versions and should be maintained in a single source. Some pages exists only for some versions, some have version specific sections. Users need to able to switch between versions.

Source Directory Structure

stateDiagram-v2
classDef mutaBor fill:#f00,color:white,font-weight:bold
classDef fixed fill:#cccccc,color:black

[*] --> config.yml
[*] --> mkdocs.yml
    [*] --> docs
    [*] --> theme_override
    docs --> index.md
    docs --> .pages
    docs --> assets
    docs --> current
class theme_override fixed
class assets fixed
class current mutaBor

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Target Directory Structure

stateDiagram-v2
classDef mutaBor fill:#f00,color:white,font-weight:bold
classDef fixed fill:#cccccc,color:black
    [*] --> mkdocs.yml
    [*] --> docs
    [*] --> theme_override
    docs --> index.md
    docs --> .pages
    docs --> assets
    docs --> Versions
    state Versions {
    [*] --> v1
    [*] --> v2
    [*] --> v3
    [*] --> latest
    }
class theme_override fixed
class assets fixed
class latest fixed
class v1 mutaBor
class v2 mutaBor
class v3 mutaBor

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Front Matter

On top of each markdown document generated in one of the version paths you will find this front-matter (plus eventual existing front matter)

this_version: v1
all_versions:
  - v1
  - v2
  - v3
isLatest: false

Configuration

The pre-processor needs a yaml file to configure its run:

source: /source # directory with source files
target: /target # directory for output, files will be overwritten here
all_versions: # list of versions to generate, simple or semantic
  - v1
  - v2
generate_redirects: true # Should redirect files be created in directory without version number
generate_latest: true # Should there be a directory `/latest` for indexing use

• Version can be simple v1, or semantic v1.1 or v1.0.2

How it works

• scans the source sub-directory with the name current for files and copies them to the version directories

• on copy markdown files are inspected for front-matter to determine what versions will have that page

• the front-matter gets updated to reflect version specific info

• if a file changes between versions, we use file name versioning. so info.md, info.v1.md and info.v2.md are considered the same file for different versions

• The first version a file appears is determined by the file name index.md or index.v1.md will be in all versions. demo.v4.1.md will only appear in version 4.1 and higher

• You can limit the versions a page will appear using front-matter:

  max_version: v2

  will only appear in v1 and v2

• .pages files are handled similarly v3.pages will replace .pages in v3 onwards

Caveats

• You want to use the awesome-pages plugin to make use of .pages navigation structure
• for the automatic redirect, you must disable thw navigation.instant feature. It is not compatible with the redirect meta statement
• you need a template versionredirect.html like in the theme_overrides direcory in this repo

Docker use

Pull the version matching your hardware

# Intel / Amd 64Bit
docker pull ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:latest
# Arm 64 Bit (e.g M1/M2/M3 macOS)
docker pull ghcr.io/hcl-tech-software/mkdocs:M1

Map the directories

• source: directory location where your mkdocs.yml and docs can be found
• docs: output directory for the transformed content
• site: destination of the final rendered site

Launch samples

The following section shows options to launch the image with options

Standard edit, no version handling

# Your current directory has regular mkdocs files
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 \
           -v ${PWD}:/docs \
           docker.qs.hcllabs.net/hclcom/mkdocs

Version preprocessing only

# Your current directory has mkdocs to be preprocessed
# and the result outputs to target
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 \
           -v ${PWD}/target:/docs \
           -v ${PWD}/source:/source \
           docker.qs.hcllabs.net/hclcom/mkdocs versions

Preprocess & Edit

# Your current directory has mkdocs to be preprocessed
# and the result outputs to target
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 \
           -v ${PWD}/target:/docs \
           -v ${PWD}/source:/source \
           docker.qs.hcllabs.net/hclcom/mkdocs versions watch

Preprocess and Render (e.g. in GitHub Action)

# Your current directory has mkdocs to be preprocessed
# and the result outputs to target
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 \
           -v ${PWD}/target:/docs \
           -v ${PWD}/source:/source \
           -v ${PWD}/site:/site \
           docker.qs.hcllabs.net/hclcom/mkdocs site