DocMD is a lightweight tool to generate a static documentation website from Markdown files located in your project's source directories. It creates a navigable HTML structure with an intuitive sidebar, perfect for documenting code or projects, usable locally or on a web server.

• Automatic conversion of Markdown files to HTML.
• Generation of a sidebar navigation with folder hierarchy.
• Index pages for each folder containing Markdown files.
• Correct relative paths for seamless navigation in local (file://) or web server contexts.
• User customizations, themes and dark mode.
• Built-in unit tests to validate generation.

• Python 3.10+
• Dependencies: python-dotenv, Markdown, Jinja2, shutils, Unidecode (installed via setup.sh).

Clone the project:

# bash
cd /path/to/project
git clone git@gitlab.com:webmarka/docmd.git docmd
cd docmd

Set up the environment:

• Place your Markdown files in the src/ folder (or customize via INCLUDE_PATHS in .env).
• Create a .env file with your custom parameters (see example below).
• Optionally, add .env.development and .env.production for environment-specific overrides.

Example .env:

ENV=dev
LANG=en_US.UTF-8  # Converted to 'en-US' for HTML
INCLUDE_PATHS=src
EXCLUDE_PATHS=.git,.hg
SAVE_DIR=docs
OUTPUT_DIR=docs
BACKUP_DIR=~/.docmd/archives
VENV_PATH=~/.docmd/venv
TEMPLATE=default.html
NAV_TITLE=Documentation
THEME=default
USE_EXTERNAL_ASSETS=False
ROOT_INDEX_TITLE = "Documentation Home"
ROOT_INDEX_SUB_TITLE = "Welcome to the Documentation"
ROOT_INDEX_PROJECT_NAME = "Root"
ROOT_SPLASH_PAGE = False
DEBUG=False

Run the setup and generation script:

./setup.sh

• Creates a virtual environment in ~/.docmd/venv/ (or as set in VENV_PATH).
• Installs Python dependencies.
• Runs unit tests.
• Generates the static site in docs/, with backups in ~/.docmd/archives/ (or as set in BACKUP_DIR).

After the first run, you can use the source ./setup.sh command instead and enter into the Python environment at the same time.

• Open docs/index.html in a browser to explore the generated documentation.

To test on a local server:

# bash
cd docs
python3 -m http.server

Then visit http://localhost:8000.

On the first run, you may need to install some packages et the Python environment will be set up. If any problem occurs while running source ./setup.py, use this instead (prevents the terminal to close on error):

# bash
./setup.py

If you want to get a more verbose console output so you can figure out what is going on internally, you can enable the debug mode via your .env file:

DEBUG=True

• Input paths: Modify INCLUDE_PATHS in .env to point to your Markdown folders (e.g., INCLUDE_PATHS=../src1,../src2).
• Excluded paths: Adjust EXCLUDE_PATHS to skip specific folders (e.g., .git,.hg).

• 0.0.5 (March 2025) - Better HTML markup and added options for website publishing.
• 0.0.4 (March 2025) - Implement new ideas for the navigation and projects management.
• 0.0.3 (March 2025) - Customizations, themes and dark mode.
• 0.0.2 (March 2025) - Improved navigation, robust unit tests, folder index page generation.
• 0.0.1 (March 2025) - First proof-of-concept version.