docs/book/src/developing/building-docs.md
The docs site you're reading is published from docs/book/. You can build the same site on your own machine, useful for offline reading, previewing edits before opening a PR, or developing translations.
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cargo mdbook is an alias for cargo run -p xtask --bin mdbook -- (defined in the cargo config).
For the architecture behind generated references, build-only outputs, gettext extraction, locale fallback, and deployment, see Generated documentation pipeline and Localization catalog lifecycle.
English is the source language for authored chapters and generated references. Translations live in docs/book/po/<locale>.po files that act as a cache, and cargo mdbook sync keeps them current. Routine English docs PRs do not need to carry the generated .po churn: leave it for a dedicated translation-cache PR. For the full translation pipeline (app strings, docs, zerocode, adding a locale, release passes), see Docs & Translations.
cargo mdbook serve auto-rebuilds on save. Skip cargo mdbook refs unless you've changed CLI flags or config schema.po/<locale>.po and reload the browser, mdbook serve detects .po changes and rebuilds automatically.rm -rf docs/book/book target/doc removes everything generated.cargo mdbook sync against unchanged English source completes in seconds, no AI calls, no cost.