Documentation CI CD

Documentation CI/CD applies continuous integration and continuous deployment practices to design system documentation. Automated pipelines build, test, and deploy documentation, ensuring quality and enabling rapid iteration. CI/CD transforms documentation from manual publishing to systematic workflow.

What Is Documentation CI/CD

Documentation CI/CD is the automation of documentation workflows from source changes to published content. Continuous integration builds documentation and runs quality checks on every change. Continuous deployment publishes approved changes automatically. Together, these practices ensure documentation stays current and maintains quality.

CI/CD recognizes documentation as a software artifact requiring engineering practices. Manual publishing is slow, error-prone, and discourages frequent updates. Automated pipelines make documentation updates as routine as code deployments.

How Documentation CI/CD Works

Documentation CI pipelines trigger on pull requests or commits. Pipelines typically include building documentation to verify the build succeeds, running tests for links, accessibility, and code examples, generating previews for review, and reporting results to pull requests.

Documentation CD pipelines trigger on merge to main branches. Pipelines build final documentation, run production checks, deploy to hosting, and optionally notify about deployments. Deployment targets include static hosting services like Netlify, Vercel, or GitHub Pages.

Preview deployments enable documentation review before merge. Each pull request receives its own preview URL showing documentation with proposed changes. Reviewers can see exactly how changes appear in context.

Key Considerations

• Build steps should match local development for consistent behavior
• Test coverage should include links, accessibility, and code examples
• Preview deployments enable review of rendered documentation
• Deployment should be automatic and reliable to encourage frequent updates

Common Questions

What tools support documentation CI/CD?

CI/CD platforms like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and CircleCI support documentation pipelines. Hosting platforms like Netlify and Vercel provide integrated CI/CD with preview deployments. Documentation frameworks often include CI/CD examples or integrations. Tool selection depends on existing infrastructure and documentation platform. Many documentation sites use GitHub Actions for CI with Netlify or Vercel for hosting and deployment.

How do teams handle documentation CI/CD for versioned documentation?

Versioned documentation adds complexity to CI/CD. Pipelines may need to build multiple documentation versions. Preview deployments should show the version being changed without affecting other versions. Deployment may require coordinating across version directories or subdomains. Documentation tools with versioning support typically provide guidance for CI/CD configuration. The key is ensuring version isolation so changes to one version do not affect others.

Summary

Documentation CI/CD automates building, testing, and deploying design system documentation. Automated pipelines ensure quality and enable rapid iteration. Preview deployments support review, and automated deployment keeps documentation current with source changes.