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Build documentation in multiple repos into one site.

• 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.

Newer versions of Git preferred.

Install plugin using pip:

pip install mkdocs-multirepo-plugin

Next, add the plugin to your mkdocs.yml

plugins:
  - multirepo:
      # (optional) tells multirepo to cleanup the temporary directory after site is built.
      cleanup: true
      # if set the docs directory will not be removed when importing docs.
      # When using this with a nav section in an imported repo you must keep the
      # docs directory in the path (e.g., docs/path/to/file.md).
      keep_docs_dir: true

You'll now have 3 ways of importing docs:

• plugins.multirepo.repos: Use this method if you don't have a nav section in the imported mkdocs.yml and want Mkdocs to generate navigation based on the directory structure. If there's a nav this configuration will be ignored since nav configuration takes precedence.
• plugins.multirepo.nav_repos: Use this if you have a nav section in your mkdocs.yml and want to refer to imported docs in the nav the same way as other docs in the repo. This can be used alongside !import statements.
• !import: Used to specify docs to import to a section in the nav. The imported repo needs to have a mkdocs.yml file with a nav section as well.

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.

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

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.

plugins:
  - search
  - multirepo:
      # (optional) tells multirepo to cleanup the temporary directory after site is built.
      cleanup: true
      # if set the docs directory will not be removed when importing docs. When using this with a nav section in an imported repo
      # you must keep the docs directory in the path (e.g., docs/path/to/file.md).
      keep_docs_dir: true
      repos:
          # There will be a navigation section with this section name
        - 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'
          section_path: python # Put this under the python menu entry
          import_url: 'https://github.com/encode/django-rest-framework'
        - section: 'Cookiecutter Pypackage'
          section_path: python # Put this under the python menu entry
          import_url: 'https://github.com/zillionare/cookiecutter-pypackage'
        - section: 'Pydantic'
          section_path: python # Put this under the python menu entry
          import_url: 'https://github.com/samuelcolvin/pydantic?branch=main'

plugins:
  - search
  - multirepo:
      # (optional) tells multirepo to cleanup the temporary directory after site is built.
      cleanup: false
      nav_repos:
        - name: backstage
          import_url: https://github.com/backstage/backstage
          # forward slash is needed in '/README.md' so that only the README.md in the root
          # directory is imported and not all README.md files.
          imports: [
            docs/publishing.md, docs/integrations/index.md, /README.md,
            # asset files needed
            docs/assets/*
            ]
        - name: fast-api
          import_url: https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi
          imports: [docs/en/docs/index.md]

nav:
  - Backstage:
      - Home: backstage/README.md
      - Integration: backstage/docs/integrations/index.md
      - Publishing: backstage/docs/publishing.md
  - FastAPI: fast-api/docs/en/docs/index.md
  # you can still use the !import statement
  - MkdocStrings: '!import https://github.com/mkdocstrings/mkdocstrings'

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.

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.

If you want to use the plugin within Azure Pipelines or Github Actions, you'll need to define an access token.

You'll need to define an AccessToken environment variable for the mkdocs build step. The access token should have access to clone all repos.

You'll need to define an GithubAccessToken environment variable for the mkdocs build step. The access token should have access to clone all repos. This can be a personal access token or one from a GitHub App.

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

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 paths can contain.

plugins:
  multirepo:
    imported_repo: true
    url: https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material
    section_name: Backstage
    # dirs/files needed for building the site
    # any path in docs will be included. For example, index.md is the
    # homepage of the parent site
    paths: ["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.

Backstage with Material theme

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

Assumes you have poetry installed and in your path

~ poetry install & poetry shell

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

• Python
• Git
• Docker
• MkDocs

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

$ python[3] -m unittest tests.unittests