mdBook

mdBook turns Markdown into online documentation books, with chapter navigation, built-in search, syntax highlighting, customizable themes, preprocessors, and Rust code-example testing.

About mdBook

mdBook is an open-source command-line tool for creating online books from Markdown. Its book-oriented structure is suitable for product documentation, developer guides, tutorials, and other material organized into chapters.

Generated books provide navigation, search, and code highlighting. Maintainers can customize the presentation through theme files and extend content processing with preprocessors. mdBook also includes a command for testing Rust code examples contained in a book.

Key Features

Markdown Book Generation: Convert Markdown chapters into an online documentation book.
Chapter Navigation: Organize content into chapters and nested sections with sidebar navigation.
Built-In Search: Let readers search across book content.
Code Presentation: Display syntax-highlighted code examples.
Customizable Themes: Override templates, styles, scripts, and other presentation files.
Extension and Testing Tools: Process content with preprocessors and test Rust code examples.

Pricing

Open-Source Software: Free under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. mdBook is explicitly available as free and open-source software. Publishing infrastructure and separately selected extensions or services are separate.

Use Cases

Publishing chapter-based developer guides
Creating product documentation and technical handbooks
Building programming tutorials with code examples
Testing Rust examples embedded in documentation

Pros & Cons

Pros:

Provides chapter navigation and integrated search
Supports theme overrides and content preprocessors
Includes testing support for Rust code examples

Cons:

The built-in code-example testing command currently supports Rust tests
Overridden theme files do not automatically receive updates to their built-in equivalents