mdBook vs YARD
mdBook
rust-lang.github.ioYARD
yardoc.orgSide by side
| Figure | mdBook | YARD |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Documentation Generators | 7.8 (#12) | 7.1 (#29) |
| Audience | The project describes mdBook as ideal for product or API documentation, tutorials, and course materials. | The site says YARD is used by projects including Addressable, DataMapper, Haml, MongoDB, Puppet, and Sass. |
| Integrations | The documentation describes using GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD to test and deploy books automatically. | The site names plugins supporting RSpec, DataMapper, and Sinatra. |
| Purpose | mdBook is a command-line tool for creating books from Markdown, including product or API documentation, tutorials, and course materials. | YARD generates consistent, usable documentation for the Ruby programming language and can export it to different formats. |
| Support | The project directs users to its GitHub issue tracker for issues and feature requests and relies on community contributions to fix bugs and add features. | The site lists an IRC channel, a mailing list, and GitHub as ways to get in touch. |
Plans
In their own words
mdBook
mdBook is a free command-line tool for creating books from Markdown, including product and API documentation, tutorials, and course materials. It builds static output files in a book directory that can be transferred to a web service. Integrated search and syntax highlighting for code blocks help readers navigate and read examples, while theme files allow formatting changes. Preprocessors can add custom syntax or modify content; backends can render output to multiple formats. The `mdbook test` command tests Rust code samples in a book. Project documentation describes using GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD to test and deploy books automatically. Developers can also import mdBook libraries or use its plugin mechanism to build custom tooling and output backends. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and Markdown is its source input. Building from source requires Rust and Cargo, with Rust 1.88 as the stated minimum. The project directs issues and feature requests to its GitHub issue tracker and relies on community contributions for bug fixes and added features. The free, open-source plan is licensed under MPL-2.0.