Automated Documentation: CI/CD with Dokka and MkDocs

📝 The Documentation Gap

Manual documentation gets stale. Automated documentation (from code) is always accurate.

Tools

1. Dokka: For API reference (KDoc).
2. MkDocs: For guides and tutorials.
3. GitHub Actions: For deployment.

🛠️ Step 1: Configure Dokka

Add to build.gradle.kts:

plugins {
    id("org.jetbrains.dokka") version "1.9.20"
}

tasks.dokkaHtml.configure {
    outputDirectory.set(file("build/dokka/html"))
}

Run ./gradlew dokkaHtml. You now have HTML files in build/dokka.

🛠️ Step 2: Configure MkDocs

Install MkDocs (Python tool).

# mkdocs.yml
site_name: My Android Project
theme:
  name: material
nav:
  - Home: index.md
  - Architecture: architecture.md
  - API Reference: api/index.html # Link to Dokka output

🚀 Step 3: GitHub Actions Workflow

Create .github/workflows/docs.yml:

name: Deploy Docs
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up JDK 17
        uses: actions/setup-java@v4
        with:
          java-version: '17'
          distribution: 'temurin'

      - name: Build Dokka
        run: ./gradlew dokkaHtml

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: 3.x

      - name: Install MkDocs
        run: pip install mkdocs-material

      - name: Move Dokka to MkDocs
        run: |
          mkdir -p docs/api
          cp -r build/dokka/html/* docs/api/

      - name: Build & Deploy
        run: mkdocs gh-deploy --force

🧠 Why This Matters

1. Single Source of Truth: Code comments = Documentation.
2. Versioning: Docs are versioned with git.
3. Accessibility: Easy for new devs to browse API.

🏁 Conclusion

Invest 30 minutes setting this up once, and never worry about stale docs again. Your team will have a professional documentation site updated on every commit.