Building project documentation from Markdown files

Documentation, Please

© Lead Image © stokkete, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © stokkete, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 263/2022
Author(s):

MkDocs, a static site generator, lets you easily transform Markdown files into ready-to-use, user-friendly project documentation.

Documentation: Everybody needs it, but not everyone wants to deal with it, especially for smaller projects where time and resources are limited. Even if you manage to find time to create technical content, turning it into user-friendly, searchable, and easy-to-navigate documentation is no mean feat – unless you use MkDocs [1]. This unassuming tool is manna from heaven for anyone looking for a straightforward and low effort way to publish and maintain documentation (Figure 1). You can also use MkDocs for any content that needs to be presented in a structured and easily searchable format, from research notes to a knowledge base.

Figure 1: MkDocs allows you to build documentation for your projects with a minimum of effort.

First Steps

If you have Python 3 and pip installed on your machine, you can deploy MkDocs by running the following command as root:

[...]

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