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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-18T15:38:13+00:00

How to start with project documentation using maven and markdown markup language? Maven site

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How to start with project documentation using maven and markdown markup language?
Maven site default is APT, which is uncomfortable to learn just to do thing maven way.
(Usually nobody in a team will start writing maven site documentation when they also need to learn one more markup language along the way.)

Has anybody tried to use markdown (the same markup language as used on github) for Maven project site documentation? I see from Maven Doxia references that it is possible.
Any issues?

I am new to maven site generation. I think markdown is better to start with, than others markup languages, that the team has not worked with.

UPDATE. Succeeded. See answer below.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Quote from http://maven.apache.org/doxia/references/index.html

    Add this to pom.xml

              <plugin>    
              <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>maven-site-plugin</artifactId>
              <version>3.2</version>
              <dependencies>
                <dependency>
                  <groupId>org.apache.maven.doxia</groupId>
                  <artifactId>doxia-module-markdown</artifactId>
                  <version>1.3</version>
                </dependency>
              </dependencies>
            </plugin>

    Then start adding pages under src/site/markdown/ with .md extension.
    For every page add menu item like in sniplet below: 

     <body>
    <!-- http://maven.apache.org/doxia/doxia-sitetools/doxia-decoration-model/decoration.html 
    <item collapse=.. ref=.. name=.. href="README" img=.. position=.. alt=.. border=.. width=.. height=.. target=.. title=.. >
    -->
    <menu name="User guide">
      <item href="README.html" name="README" />
    </menu>

    <menu ref="reports" inherit="bottom" />
  </body>

    Than use mvn site to generate site.
    Look at target/site to review results.

    mvn site:stage -DstagingDirectory=C:\TEMP\fullsite to get multi-modular project site in one folder.

    Read more about maven-site-plugin.

    I recommend to use maven-fluido-skin. It is newest style, based on Twitter Bootstrap
    Add this to site.xml

    <project name="xxx">
  [...]
  <skin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.skins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-fluido-skin</artifactId>
    <version>1.3.0</version>
  </skin>
  [...]
</project>

    See also
    https://github.com/winterstein/Eclipse-Markdown-Editor-Plugin

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