7.3 KiB
| title | icon |
|---|---|
| Built-in projects plugin | material/folder-open |
Built-in projects plugin
The projects plugin adds the ability to split your main project into multiple distinct projects, build them concurrently and preview them together as one. This is particularly useful when creating a multi-language project, but can also be used to split very large projects into smaller parts.
Objective
How it works
The plugin scans the configured [projects directory][config.projects_dir] for
mkdocs.yml files, identifies all nested projects and builds them concurrently.
If not configured otherwise, the plugin expects that your project has
the following directory layout, e.g. for a multi-language project:
.
├─ docs/
├─ projects/
│ ├─ en/
│ │ ├─ docs/
│ │ └─ mkdocs.yml
│ └─ de/
│ ├─ docs/
│ └─ mkdocs.yml
└─ mkdocs.yml
One of the most useful and interesting features of the plugin is that it allows previewing your site from the main project, while still being able to preview and build each project individually. This is especially useful for multi-language projects.
If, when previewing your site, you change a file in one of the projects, the plugin only rebuilds this project and makes sure that MkDocs will also reload the associated files. This also creates the opportunity for splitting your main project into several projects for a better editing experience.
There are some limitations, but we're working hard to remove them.
When to use it
The plugin came into existence because we needed a convenient and scalable method to build our examples repository, which features many self-contained and runnable projects that users can download and use as a basis when boostrapping a new project or creating a reproduction.
When you want to create a multi-language project, or have a very large existing project, you might consider using the plugin, as it makes managing, editing and building more comfortable.
Configuration
In order to get started with the projects plugin, just add the following lines
to mkdocs.yml, and split your main project into several distinct projects that
can be built concurrently:
plugins:
- projects
The projects plugin is built into Material for MkDocs and doesn't need to be installed.
General
The following settings are available:
Use this setting to enable or disable the plugin when building your project.
If you want to disable the plugin, e.g., for local builds, you can use an
[environment variable][mkdocs.env] in mkdocs.yml:
plugins:
- projects:
enabled: !ENV [CI, false]
This configuration enables the plugin only during continuous integration (CI).
With more CPUs available, the plugin can do more work in parallel, and thus build projects faster. If you want to disable concurrent processing completely, use:
plugins:
- projects:
concurrency: 1
By default, the plugin uses all available CPUs - 1 with a minimum of 1.
Caching
The plugin implements an intelligent caching mechanism, ensuring that a project is only rebuilt when its contents change. While the initial build might take some time, it's a good idea to use caching, as it will speed up consecutive builds.
The following settings are available for caching:
Use this setting to instruct the plugin to bypass the cache, in order to rebuild all projects, even though the cache may not be stale. It's normally not necessary to specify this setting, except for when debugging the plugin itself. Caching can be disabled with:
plugins:
- projects:
cache: false
It is normally not necessary to specify this setting, except for when you want to change the path within your root directory where the metadata is cached. If you want to change it, use:
plugins:
- projects:
cache_dir: my/custom/dir
Projects
The following settings are available for projects:
Use this setting to enable or disable building of projects. Currently, the
plugin's sole purpose is to build projects, so it's equivalent to the
[enabled][config.enabled] setting, but in the future, other features might be
added. If you want to disable building of projects, use:
plugins:
- projects:
projects: false
Use this setting to change the folder where your projects are located. It's normally not necessary to change this setting, but if you want to rename the folder or change its file system location, use:
plugins:
- projects:
projects_dir: projects
Note that the [projects directory][config.projects_dir] is solely used for
project organization – it is not included in project URLs, since projects are
automatically hoisted by the plugin.
The provided path is resolved from the root directory.
Hoisting
The following settings are available for hoisting:
Use this setting to enable or disable hoisting of themes files to the main project. If you disable this setting, each project receives a copy of the theme's files, which can be considered redundant:
plugins:
- projects:
hoisting: false
It's generally advisable to enable hoisting, as it yields faster deployments and faster loading of your project's sites, because the files are the same for all projects and can be deduplicated.
Limitations
The plugin is one of the latest additions to Material for MkDocs, which means it is rather young and has some limitations. We're working hard to remove them, and we're happy to receive feedback and learn about your requirements in ?5800. Current limitations are:
-
Basic multi-language support only: we'll be investigating how to provide better support for multi-language projects, allowing to easier interlink projects and switch between them.
-
Separate search indexes and sitemaps: currently, the projects are entirely separate, which means they will have separate search indexes and sitemaps.