Using AsciiDoc content for the website and other downstream processes is now more powerful than ever!
In 2022, Antora acquired of lot of new skills via its extendable APIs and the new plugins that emerged. In the video for FOSDEM, Fabrice and me show and explain how the content pipeline for Eclipse Che was enhanced using Antora and the Antora plugins Collector and Assembler. There’s also a link to the example repository to see them in action.
Content pipelines matter
For a project of a reasonable size, there’s usually more than one content source for the website that needs to be published. For several years, Antora is known as a site generator which pulls AsciiDoc content from multiple Git repositories at once. It publishes a static website where users find a navigation, online search and linked pages, with the option to group everything by component versions.
In 2022, Antora made the leap to open its publishing process via APIs to plugins: They allow pulling information dynamically during the build process and forward the content not only to a static HTML site, but other targets like PDFs as well. This talk outlines what is possible today with these extensions, and how it can be extended for custom needs.
FOSDEM video
Fabrice and I recorded this 30 minutes video, and most of it is an interview about the background why this was done this way at the Eclipse Che project and what changed for the better with Antora.
Near the end there’s a short walk-through of the example repository which will help you to get started. Once there is a recorded Q&A from FOSDEM, I’ll also link it here.
The slides are available on Speakerdeck.
Example repository
The Eclipse Che documentation Git repository contains a lot of content and real-world scripts which this talk covers.
Still, to experiment and try out things, it’s better to have something small. That’s why there’s an example repository with Antora and Antora extensions.
Give it a try and let Fabrice and me know what you liked, where you have questions, and what you plan to try out in your current or next project.