tier-mkdocs-techdocs-core

This is the base Mkdocs plugin used at TIER Mobility with Spotify's TechDocs. It is forked from the Backstage core plugin.

Usage

Requires Python version >= 3.7

$ pip install tier-mkdocs-techdocs-core

Once you have installed the tier-mkdocs-techdocs-core plugin, you'll need to add it to your mkdocs.yml.

site_name: Backstage Docs

nav:
  - Home: index.md
  - Developing a Plugin: developing-a-plugin.md

plugins:
  - tier-techdocs-core

Development

Running Locally

You can install this package locally using pip and the --editable flag used for making developing Python packages.

pip install --editable .

You'll then have the tier-techdocs-core package available to use in Mkdocs and pip will point the dependency to this folder.

Linting

We use black as our linter. Please run it against your code before submitting a pull request.

pip install black
black .

Note: This will write to all Python files in src/ with the formatted code. If you would like to only check to see if it passes, simply append the --check flag.

Testing Depedencies End-to-End

Much of the value of this plugin lies in its dependencies, on which there are implicit dependencies upstream in the Backstage TechDocs frontend plugin. Each time you update a pinned dependency, it's important to test that generated documentation can be loaded and parsed as expected in the Backstage frontend. The recommended way to do so is the following:

1. Make the expected dependency change locally in requirements.txt.
2. Clone the techdocs-container image and, within the cloned directory, copy the entire contents of your local version of tier-mkdocs-techdocs-core, e.g. named local-mkdocs-techdocs-core.
3. Just before the RUN pip install command in techdocs-container's Dockerfile, add a COPY command that copies the contents of your modified tier-mkdocs-techdocs-core directory into the container's file system. Something like: COPY ./local-mkdocs-techdocs-core/ /local-mkdocs-techdocs-core/
4. Modify the RUN pip install... command to install an editable version of the copied local plugin, rather than the specific version. Something like... RUN pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -e /local-mkdocs-techdocs-core
5. Build the modified image: docker build -t mkdocs:local-dev .
6. Modify your local Backstage instance to use your locally built techdocs-container instead of using the published image by setting the following configuration:

techdocs:
  generator:
    runIn: "docker"
    dockerImage: "mkdocs:local-dev"

MkDocs plugins and extensions

The TechDocs Core MkDocs plugin comes with a set of extensions and plugins that mkdocs supports. Below you can find a list of all extensions and plugins that are included in the TechDocs Core plugin:

Plugins:

• search: A search plugin is provided by default with MkDocs which uses lunr.js as a search engine.
• mkdocs-monorepo-plugin: This plugin enables you to build multiple sets of documentation in a single MkDocs project. It is designed to address writing documentation in Spotify's largest and most business-critical codebases (typically monoliths or monorepos).
• kroki: This plugin enables you to embed Kroki-Diagrams into your documentation.
  • ServerURL parameter can be set from KROKI_SERVER_URL environmental variable
  • DownloadImages parameter can be set from KROKI_DOWNLOAD_IMAGES environmental variable

Extensions:

• admonition: Admonitions, also known as call-outs, are an excellent choice for including side content without significantly interrupting the document flow. Material for MkDocs provides several different types of admonitions and allows for the inclusion and nesting of arbitrary content.
• toc: The Table of Contents extension generates a Table of Contents from a Markdown document and adds it into the resulting HTML document. This extension is included in the standard Markdown library.
• pymdown: PyMdown Extensions is a collection of extensions for Python Markdown. All extensions are found under the module namespace of pymdownx.
  • caret: Caret is an extension that is syntactically built around the ^ character. It adds support for inserting superscripts and adds an easy way to place text in an <ins> tag.
  • critic: Critic adds handling and support of Critic Markup.
  • details: Details creates collapsible elements with <details> and <summary> tags.
  • emoji: Emoji makes adding emoji via Markdown easy 😄.
  • superfences: SuperFences is like Python Markdown's fences, but better. Nest fences under lists, admonitions, and other syntaxes. You can even create special custom fences for content like UML.
  • inlinehilite: InlineHilite highlights inline code: from module import function as func.
  • magiclink: MagicLink linkafies URL and email links without having to wrap them in Markdown syntax. Also, shortens repository issue, pull request, and commit links automatically for popular code hosting providers. You can even use special shorthand syntax to link to issues, diffs, and even mention people
  • mark: Mark allows you to mark words easily.
  • smartsymbols: SmartSymbols inserts commonly used Unicode characters via simple ASCII representations: =/= → ≠.
  • highlight: Highlight allows you to configure the syntax highlighting of SuperFences and InlineHilite. Also passes standard Markdown indented code blocks through the syntax highlighter.
  • extra: Extra is just like Python Markdown's Extra package except it uses PyMdown Extensions to substitute similar extensions.
  • tabbed: Tabbed allows for tabbed Markdown content.
  • tasklist: Tasklist allows inserting lists with check boxes.
  • tilde: Tilde is syntactically built around the ~ character. It adds support for inserting subscripts and adds an easy way to place text in a <del> tag.
• markdown_inline_graphviz: A Python Markdown extension replaces inline Graphviz definitions with inline SVGs or PNGs. Activate the inline_graphviz extension using the usage instructions.
• mdx_truly_sane_lists: An extension for Python-Markdown that makes lists truly sane. Features custom indents for nested lists and fix for messy linebreaks and paragraphs between lists.

Caveats

Theme

We only use material-mkdocs as base styles because Backstage also uses the Material UI on the client-side. We don't expect people to use themes other than Material UI to maintain consistency across all Backstage pages (in other words, documentation pages have the same look and feel as any other Backstage page) and so we use the BackstageTheme configured in Front-end application as the source of truth for all application design tokens like colors, typography and etc. So here you can see that some styles will always be overridden regardless of the mkdocs-material plugin theme settings and this can cause unexpected behavior for those who override the theme setting in a mkdocs.yaml file.

Changelog

0.0.10

• Catch up on upgrade of mkdocs-monorepo-plugin to v1.0.1, missed in the previous release

0.0.9

• Merged upstream v1.1.2.

0.0.8

• Included kroki plugin
  • Allow setting kroki server URL via environmental variable KROKI_SERVER_URL
  • Allow setting kroki download image policy via environmental variable KROKI_DOWNLOAD_IMAGES
• Customize search plugin configuration to have a pre-build index by default

License

Copyright 2020-2021 © The Backstage Authors. All rights reserved. The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our Trademark Usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0