22,032 stars · MPL-2.0 · v0.5.4 (6 Jul 2026) · Track this in Scout
Turns a folder of Markdown chapters into a searchable book-style website.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
mdBook is the program the Rust language project uses to publish its own manuals. It reads a list of chapters and a folder of Markdown files, then writes a static website with navigation, built-in search and printable output.
What it is good for. Anyone with a manual, a handbook, an internal runbook or a training course that has outgrown a single long document. It also suits a team that wants documentation kept beside the code in version control rather than inside a separate web application that somebody has to administer.
- Search is built in and works with no service behind it, because the index ships as part of the site.
- The output is plain files. Any static hosting will serve it, and there is nothing to keep patched.
- It publishes the Rust language's own books, so the format is exercised hard every day.
- The licence is MPL-2.0, the Mozilla Public License, which is file-level copyleft: changes to mdBook's own files must be published if the modified program is distributed. The licence file carries no copyright line at all, only the unfilled template.
- The README has no install instructions whatsoever. It points at the documentation site, so a reader who stops at GitHub gets no commands.
- 565 open issues against 96 open pull requests, a high ratio for a project this size. The documented
cargo install --gitroute builds an unpinned tip of branch rather than a release.
- squidfunk/mkdocs-material
Makes a polished searchable documentation site from Markdown, as a theme on MkDocs rather than a standalone builder, with a sponsor-only Insiders edition.
Track this in Scout - facebook/docusaurus
Turns Markdown documents into a site with search and versioning, as a React application much heavier than plain HTML output.
Track this in Scout - mkdocs/mkdocs
The same job in Python with a very large theme and plugin ecosystem; last code 20 October 2025, the quietest of the three.
Track this in Scout
cargo install mdbook mdbook init my-book cd my-book mdbook serve
