Build! Displaying the Docs

The Basics

Mkdocs has two basic commands to display the docs locally:

• Build
• Serve

Both runs in the command line, just as:

mkdocs build
# OR
mkdocs serve

You can attach more arguments, most of them are common in both commands. The one we're using the most is "-f", that allow us to use another configuration file (mkdocs.yml by default)

With the "-f" argument, using the "mkdocs_es.yml", an updated "locales/messages.pot" file is generated. Learn more in the [translations] section

Build

This command build the docs into html files using mkdocs theme (css).

The output files go to the "sites/ " directory by default.

Use the "-d" argument to specify the output directory

The output files won't be erased at each build by default.

Use the "--clean" argument to clean the build directory before building

The configuration file must be named "mkdocs.yml " by default.

Use the "-f" argument to specify a configuration file.

Serve

This command will also build the docs but into a temporal directory and will start serving it. By default, it generates a webserver at: http://localhost:8000

The command line will prompt whenever a page is served and any error thrown.

The configuration file must be named "mkdocs.yml " by default.

Use the "-f" argument to specify a configuration file.