Automate your Documentation with Gitlab and Mkdocs
Tags: devops, python, docker, github
Published: 2020-12-25 11:17:11

  Producing documentation may be painful and need a lot of time to write and operate. In this story, i will share with you, my way of generating docs using the devops approach. To make life easier, we will explore the art of automation 😃.


Let’s go folks 😙


## Create a Gitlab repo
This is straightforward, follow these steps:
* Log in to your GitLab
* Click new project
* Give it a name: auto_docs
* Initialize it with a README.md file
* Make it public or private
* Hit create

Now clone the project by copying the URL and run this command :
`$ git clone https://gitlab.com/auto_docs.git`

## Setting up the environment
I’m using a Linux environment but it is possible to reproduce the same steps on a Windows machine.
In order to follow me, you need a set of tools that must be available on your machine … make sure to to have python3 installed, I have python 3.8 (latest).

## Creating a virtual environment
The easiest way to set up a virtual environment is to install virtualenv python package by executing pip install virtualenv .

Navigate to your local GitLab repository and create a new virtual environment.

`$ cd auto_docs/
$ virtualenv autodocs
$ source autodocs/bin/acivate`

## Installing Mkdocs Material
Make sure that the virtual environment is active.
Install the mkdocs material with this command : pip install mkdocs-material.
This package needs some dependencies to work .. install them by using a `requirement.txt` file, copy-paste the dependencies list to filename requirements.txt
```
Babel==2.8.0
click==7.1.1
future==0.18.2
gitdb==4.0.4
GitPython==3.1.1
htmlmin==0.1.12
Jinja2==2.11.2
joblib==0.14.1
jsmin==2.2.2
livereload==2.6.1
lunr==0.5.6
Markdown==3.2.1
MarkupSafe==1.1.1
mkdocs==1.1
mkdocs-awesome-pages-plugin==2.2.1
mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin==0.5.0
mkdocs-material==5.1.1
mkdocs-material-extensions==1.0b1
mkdocs-minify-plugin==0.3.0
nltk==3.5
Pygments==2.6.1
pymdown-extensions==7.0
pytz==2019.3
PyYAML==5.3.1
regex==2020.4.4
six==1.14.0
smmap==3.0.2
tornado==6.0.4
tqdm==4.45.0
```

Install them all with one command : `pip install -r requirements.txt`

Now it’s time to create a new mkdocs project 😅.

Run this command : `mkdocs new` . and verify that you have this structure :
```
|--auto_docs
    |--- docs
    |--- mkdocs.yml
```
* The `docs` folder contains the structure of your documentation, it contains subfolders and markdown files.
* The `mkdocs.yml` file defines the configuration of the generated site.
Let's test the installation by running this command : mkdocs serve . The site will be accessible on `http://locahost:8000` and you should see the initial look of the docs.

## Setting up the CI/CD
let’s enable le CI/CD to automate the build and the deployment of the docs. Notice that GitLab offers a feature called gitlab pages that can serve for free a static resource (HTML, js, CSS). The repo path is converted to an URL to your docs.
## Create the CI/CD file
Gitlab uses a YAML file — it holds the pipeline configuration.
The CI file content:
```yaml
stages :
  - build
pages:
  stage: build
  image:
  name: squidfunk/mkdocs-material
  entrypoint:
    - ""
  script:
    - mkdocs build
    - mv site public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  only:
    - master
  tags:
    - gitlab-org-docker
```
This pipeline uses a docker executor with an image that contains mkdocs already installed… mkdocs build the project and put the build assets on a folder called site … to be able to use GitLab pages you have to name your job pages and put the site assets into a new folder called public.
For tags: check the runner's section under settings → CI/CD →Runners and pick one of the shared runners that have a tag GitLab-org-docker.
All things were done 🎉 🎉 😸 !

Oh ! just one thing … we forgot the virtual environment files .. they are big and not needed on the pipeline … they are for the local development only. The mkdocs image on the pipeline is already shipped with the necessary packages.
So … create a new file called .gitignore and add these lines:

```
auto_docs/ 
requirements.txt
```
The auto_docs folder has the same name as the virtual environment .. don't forget 😠! you will be punished by pushing +100Mi 😝 and you will wait your whole life to complete the process haha 😢.

Now run `git add . && git commit -m "initial commit" a && git push `… go to your GitLab repo and click CI/CD → pipelines, click on the blue icon and visualize the logs .. once the job succeeded, navigate to settings -> pages and click the link of your new documentation site (you have to wait for 10m~ to be accessible)

Finally, I hope this was helpful ! thanks for reading 😺 😍!