Full preview on GitHub.dev possible?

[michaelherger]

Hi there! We're using Material for MKDocs to maintain a site which isn't primarily addressing developers. We have some contributors who create a Github account just to help us with documentation. But these guys don't speak Docker or terminal window.

Some of these contributors edit the documents on Github directly. I've shown ways to use GitHub.dev to have a basic preview available. But most of the magic behind Material for MKDocs isn't available this way. I see that you have a .devcontainer available. Would this in theory allow us to have the pages rendered while editing on GitHub.dev? If so, how would this be achieved?

Michael

[niclasheinz]

Hi @michaelherger

You can use mkdocs serve in your GitHub.dev codespace. All you need to do is enable port 8000. If you don't have a .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file yet, you can check here.

This devcontainer configuration will install the Python dependencies from the requirements.txt, after which port 8000 will be enabled automatically.

[michaelherger]

Thanks a lot for this info! That might help us a lot!

But how would I access the rendered pages in this way? How would I "enable port 8000"? Would that port then be exposed to the public internet?

[niclasheinz]

If you use this devcontainer.json, the port is activated automatically.

However, if you want to open the port manually, you can simply go to the PORTS tab in the navigation and add a new port. For mkdocs serve normally port 8000:

[michaelherger]

Wow! That's brilliant! Now I only have to document how to edit the documentation this way 😁.

[squidfunk]

I can only say it's on our radar – we really want to make something that can be used by non-technicals as well.