Documentation site architecture

The gitlab-docs project hosts the repository which is used to generate the GitLab documentation website and is deployed to https://docs.gitlab.com. It uses the Nanoc static site generator.

View the gitlab-docs architecture page for more information.

Source files

The documentation source files are in the same repositories as the product code.

Project	Path
GitLab	/doc
GitLab Runner	/docs
Omnibus GitLab	/doc
Charts	/doc
GitLab Operator	/doc

Documentation issues and merge requests are part of their respective repositories and all have the label Documentation.

Publication

Documentation for GitLab, GitLab Runner, GitLab Operator, Omnibus GitLab, and Charts is published to https://docs.gitlab.com.

The same documentation is included in the application. To view the in-product help, go to the URL and add /help at the end. Only help for your current edition and version is included.

Help for other versions is available at https://docs.gitlab.com/archives/.

Updating older versions

If you need to add or edit documentation for a GitLab version that has already been released, follow the patch release runbook.

Documentation in other repositories

If you have code and documentation in a repository other than the primary repositories, you should keep the documentation with the code in that repository.

Then you can use one of these approaches:

• Recommended. Add the repository to the list of products published at https://docs.gitlab.com. The source of the documentation pages remains in the external repository, but the resulting pages are indexed and searchable on https://docs.gitlab.com.
• Recommended. Add an entry in the global navigation for https://docs.gitlab.com that links directly to the documentation in that external repository. The documentation pages are not indexed or searchable on https://docs.gitlab.com. View an example.
• Create a landing page for the product in the gitlab repository, and add the landing page to the global navigation, but keep the rest of the documentation in the external repository. The landing page is indexed and searchable on https://docs.gitlab.com, but the rest of the documentation is not. For example, the GitLab Workflow extension for VS Code. We do not encourage the use of pages with lists of links, so only use this option if the recommended options are not feasible.

Monthly release process (versions)

The docs website supports versions and each month we add the latest one to the list. For more information, read about the monthly release process.

Danger Bot

GitLab uses Danger for some elements in code review. For docs changes in merge requests, whenever a change to files under /doc is made, Danger Bot leaves a comment with further instructions about the documentation process. This is configured in the Dangerfile in the GitLab repository under /danger/documentation/.

Request a documentation survey banner

To reach to a wider audience, you can request a survey banner.

Only one banner can exist at any given time. Priority is given based on who asked for the banner first.

To request a survey banner:

1. Open an issue in the gitlab-docs project and use the "Survey banner request" template.
2. Fill in the details in the issue description.
3. Create the issue and someone from the Technical Writing team will handle your request.
4. When you no longer need the banner, ping the person assigned to the issue and ask them to remove it.