MkDocs vs RDoc

MkDocs is a static site generator for project documentation written in Markdown, with project settings held in a YAML file. It produces static HTML that can be published to GitHub Pages, Amazon S3, or another static-file host. Its development server provides a local preview and refreshes it when documentation changes; generated sites also include search that can link to matching sections. The command-line tools cover creating a project, serving a preview, building the site, checking dependencies, and deploying to GitHub Pages. MkDocs uses Python-Markdown and requires a recent Python version and pip. The built-in mkdocs and readthedocs themes are available alongside third-party and custom themes, while plugins, Markdown extensions, and configuration options allow further changes. The built-in mkdocs theme supports several locales, including English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese. MkDocs is free, available for Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use, and distributed under the BSD license. Third-party themes and plugins run their authors’ code without sandboxing.

RDoc is free software for producing Ruby project documentation as HTML pages and command-line reference output. The `rdoc` command generates documentation, while `ri` displays it. It processes Ruby, C, and RBS source files, plus RDoc markup, Markdown, RD, and TomDoc documents. RBS declarations can describe classes, modules, methods, attributes, and constants, and can add comments or type signatures to matching Ruby source documentation. A local preview server watches source files and refreshes the browser after changes. It uses Ruby’s built-in TCPServer and needs no external gems, but provides neither HTTPS nor HTTP/2 and is intended only for local previews. RDoc reports documentation coverage with `rdoc -C`, or includes parameter names with `rdoc -C1`. Generation can be automated through Rake or the RDoc API. Aliki is the default theme; Darkfish is deprecated. Ruby 3.2.0 or newer is required for the current gem.