Documentation plays a pivotal role in the success of a project. It is a beacon of knowledge that guides developers and users through a project’s intricacies.
The Rust community recognizes the significance of comprehensive documentation in software projects, and Rust has an official documentation tool: mdBook. This program makes Rust project documentation easy and encourages you to embrace effective documentation practices.
What Is mdBook?
mdBook is afree documentation tooltailored for Rust projects. It uses Markdown (a lightweight markup language) to create appealing and navigable project documentation.
One primary aim of documentation is bridging the gap between code and human comprehension. mdBook excels by offering a structured format that makes docs easy to browse and search.
mdBook supports collaboration with a centralized knowledge-sharing platform for stakeholders to contribute to documentation.
mdBook promotes teamwork, encourages idea exchange, and ensures a collective understanding of the project, improving yourdocs-as-code process. This collaborative approach enhances productivity, minimizes knowledge silos, and strengthens the development workflow.
Getting Started With mdBook
mdBook is a command-line tool that you can install through various sources.
mdBook is available on Cargo’s package registry. If you have Rust and Cargo installed on your machine, you can use thecargo installcommand to install the command line tool.
You can also install mdBook with Homebrew:
Once you’ve installed it, you can use themdbook –versioncommand to verify the installation. The command prints the version of mdBook you have installed.
you may initialize a new mdBook documentation project with the init command.
This example command creates a new directory namedmy-docswith the necessary file structure for your project.
mdBook uses a simple structure for organizing documentation:
Here’s an overview of mdBook’s documentation file structure:
You can use additional directories and configuration for your project’s specific needs.
Creating and Organizing Chapters and Sections
Open theSUMMARY.mdfile in your favorite text editor and add these lines of Markdown code:
You’ve added three chapters to your documentation: Introduction, Getting Started, and Advanced Usage.
Create asrc/chaptersdirectory and create Markdown files for each chapter inside it under thechapters/directory.
You’ll write the documentation in the Markdown files for each chapter as you write regularMarkdown files.
Here’s an example code explanation for thechapters/advanced-usage.mdfile.
The Parallel Processing section starts with the#Markdown syntax specifying the section name.
Remember to follow the conventional Markdown syntax for formatting your content. mdBook supports most Markdown functionality, including lists, paragraphs, links, etc.
After writing your documentation, you’re able to use the various mdBook commands to operate on it. For example, you can use themdbook servecommand to serve your documentation.
On running the command, mdBook will serve your project’s documentationon localhostport 3000, so you can view it in a browser athttp://localhost:3000/.
Here’s an overview of the other mdBook commands that you can use to improve your project’s documentation:
Description
Creates the boilerplate structure and files for a new book.
Builds a book from its markdown files.
Tests that a book’s Rust code samples compile.
Deletes a built book.
completions
Generate shell completions for your shell to stdout.
Watches a book’s files and rebuilds it on changes.
Serves a book and rebuilds it on changes.
Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s).
mdBook can improve your Rust project documentation workflow. Most Rust projects use the files from mdBook on other documentation platforms.
Build Sophisticated Web Apps in Rust and Document Them With mdBook
Rust powers mdBook with a custom renderer that generates the output formats. The renderer can efficiently generate output formats quickly without consuming many resources.
You can use mdBook to document your Rust-based web applications. By entering your Rust web apps with mdBook, you can foster collaboration through a smooth docs-as-code process.
Q: Which Editor Should I Use to Write Markdown?
The big advantage of Markdown is that it’s plain text, so you may use almost any editor of your choice, like Notepad, Vim, or Sublime Text. You can usean IDE like VSCode, and even a full-blown word processor likeMicrosoft Word can handle Markdown.
Q: What’s the Difference Between mdBook and MkDocs?
Like mdBook, MkDocs is a static site generator specializing in documentation. But, while mdBook handles Rust projects, MkDocs isa tool for Python developers.
Q: Does Rust Have Docstrings?
Docstrings let you automate documentation using comments to annotate your code. Languages including JavaScript andPython support docstrings, and Rust does too.
