Rustmark is a simple Markdown server written in Rust. It is intended to be easy to use, easy to fork and customise, and easy to deploy.
The main sections in this README are:
The entry point for reading the Markdown files is the index page. If you are here to read the content (for instance if you are using a Git system to preview the Markdown, such as GitHub or Gitea), start there.
An example showing available Features is also provided, along with some Guidelines for use.
The intention is to provide a simple system that is easy to maintain, and focused on developer documentation - or at least, documentation written by people who are comfortable working in Markdown with text editors, and committing their changes to a Git repository.
There are many tools available to provide wiki-style functionality in very friendly ways, the leading product (arguably) being Notion. Coda also deserves an honourable mention, but Confluence, although widely used due to the popularity of Jira, lags a long way behind.
Notion is a great product, with some excellent and powerful features, and it is also very easy to use. However, it does not feature any kind of approval process, meaning that it is all too easy for incorrect information to creep in - and the more pages there are to keep an eye on, the worse this problem becomes. Although Notion does have page edit history, and change alerts, it is not possible to require that changes are approved before they are published. Locking edit access is not really a solution, as it would prevent the very people who are most likely to need to make changes from doing so, and focus the work on a small number of specific people.
Therefore, the primary purpose of Rustmark is to provide a simple, easy-to-use system for publishing developer-focused documentation, with a simple approval process managed through standard Git pull requests. It is not intended to be a replacement for Notion, or any other wiki-style system, and it is quite likely best to use both in tandem, with Notion for general documentation and pages that non-techies need to edit.
Most Git server systems provide a Markdown preview feature, which is great for those people that have access to Git. But what if the documentation needs to be accessible to people who do not have access to the Git server? Although Rustmark is aimed at developers, that particular focus is in the context of editing. It also needs to be accessible to non-developers - plus, browsing pages on a Git server is not always the most user-friendly experience.
Additionally, this approach allows for a lot of flexibility in terms of styling and presentation, customisation, and hosting.
GitHub Pages is a great way to host static content, and it is very easy to use. However, not everyone uses or wants to use GitHub, and there are constraints on the free accounts that may not make it the ideal choice for some people. There are also limitations on the amount of customisation that can be performed, and it is not possible to do anything dynamic, as ultimately it is based on Jekyll.
There are many, many static site generators available, and each has their pros and cons. Jekyll, being written in Ruby, is not very performant. Hugo is written in Go, and is very fast, but it is not the easiest to customise. Gatsby is written in JavaScript, and is very customisable, but it is also very complex, heavily dependent upon React, and requires a lot of dependencies. They are just some of the most popular and widely-known systems. mdBook is perhaps a close contender, and Rust-based, but it still has critical differences.
Each system has had key decisions made about it which differentiate it from the others. One key decision that Rustmark makes is to use Markdown files as the source of the content, but also to mantain compatibility with general Git server previewing. Most regular static site generators use some flavour of templating language, and those that use Markdown do not provide quite the same focus or features as Rustmark.
With Rustmark, it's possible to easily share things like README files between different repositories, without worrying about conversion or compatibility, which is a benefit for dev teams. Rustmark also has no JavaScript dependencies, and indeed hardly any JavaScript at all.
Additionally, there was a desire to write something in Rust!
It is totally possible to generate static content from the Markdown files, and then host that content on a static web server. If that is a requirement then the build output can be used directly, and there is then technically no need to run the server. Indeed, being able to do this in a more formal manner may end up being a feature of Rustmark.
However, there are three compelling reasons for running it as a server:
Additionally, because Rustmark has a web sever built in, there is zero secondary setup required to get started. Just run the binary, and it works. Of course, some people will want to run it behind a reverse proxy, and that is also possible.
Yes. Although, it has been tested with a repository containing over 10,000 Markdown files, which is 550MB of Markdown, and it works just fine. It is unlikely that many people will have a repository that large, and if they do, they probably have bigger problems to worry about!
Still, it is a valid concern, and it is something that may be addressed in the future, probably with a configuration setting to control whether everything is built into the binary or left externally to be deployed alongside it.
The steps to set up this project are simple and standard. You need a reasonably-recent Rust environment, on a Linux machine. There are currently no special requirements beyond what is needed to build a standard Rust project.
There are some key points to note about the environment you choose:
Typically, you will set up Rust using rustup, which is
the recommended way to install Rust. The stable toolchain is targeted, as the
focus is on stability and correctness, rather than bleeding-edge features.
Once you have Rust installed, you can build the project using cargo build.
This will download and compile all dependencies, and build the project. You can
then run the project using cargo run.
Rustmark is configured using a TOML file. The default configuration file is
Config.toml, which should be placed in the same directory as the binary. The
configuration settings (and file) are optional, and if not provided, Rustmark
will use default values for all configuration options.
It is also possible to pass configuration parameters from the command line, as environment variables. The environment variables take precedence over the configuration file options.
Rustmark can be run using the cargo run command, or by running the compiled
binary directly. The server will listen on port 8000 by default, and will serve
content from the markdown and static directories. The markdown directory
contains the Markdown files to be rendered, and the static directory contains
the static files to be served.
You can run the test suite using cargo test. This will run all unit and
integration tests.
Note that, at present, there are no tests written specifically for this project, as it is mostly a combination of other crates from the Rust ecosystem. Tests might be added when the project is more mature and sensible things to test have been clearly identified.
You can build the developer documentation using cargo doc. This will generate
HTML files and place them into target/doc. You can then open the documentation
in your browser by opening target/doc/rustmark/index.html.
Building the documentation for local development use will also provide you with links to the source code.
The repository is designed so that it can be forked, and content added. As such, it is best to keep in line with the existing structure and intended usage, to make updates from the upstream repository easier to merge and apply.
Markdown files should be placed in the content directory, along with any
images and other files that need to be protected by the same authentication as
the rendered Markdown pages. Public images should be placed in the static/img
path, and will be served from the /img URL path.
All of the content and static material is included in the compiled binary, making it very straightforward to deploy.
If any customisations are required, they should be placed in the js/custom.js
and css/custom.css files. These files are included after the default CSS and
JavaScript, and so can be used to override the default behaviour. These files
will not be modified when updating from the upstream repository.
Note that the custom.js file is only included in the rendered Markdown pages,
once logged in, and not in the general system pages such as the login page. The
custom.css file is included in all pages.
You can build the project in release mode by using cargo build --release.
Everything required for deployment will be contained in the single binary file
produced. It is recommended to run upx on the
executable before deployment, to reduce the file size.
The resulting binary file can then be copied to the deployment environment, and run directly. This will often be in a Docker or Kubernetes container, but that is outside the scope of this document.
A typical build script might look like this:
sh
cargo build --release
upx --best target/release/rustmark
scp target/release/rustmark you@yourserver:/path/to/deployment/directory
The name "Rustmark" is a combination of the words "Rust" and "Markdown". There is no affiliation with the Rust project or the Rust Foundation, nor any intent to imply any.
This project uses the Rust logo as a default, due to being written in Rust. The logo is freely usable under the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) license.
An image of Ferris the crab (the Rust mascot) is used to illustrate the Markdown content examples. This image is sourced from rustacean.net and is in the Public Domain, so can be freely used.
This project uses the Bulma CSS framework, which is published under the MIT license and free to use without restriction.
The Font Awesome icons are published under the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) license, and the webfonts under the SIL OFL (Open Font License). They are freely usable, along with the CSS code used to display them, which is released under the MIT license.
The Twemoji graphics used to stylise Unicode emojis are published by Twitter under the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) license, and are freely usable, along with the Twitter JavaScript code used to transform them, which is released under the MIT license.