cargo-insert-docs 0.9.0

Insert feature docs into your crate docs, and crate docs into your README.
cargo-insert-docs-0.9.0 is not a library.

cargo-insert-docs

Crates.io License Build Status

cargo-insert-docs helps you keep your documentation in sync by doing two jobs:

  1. Insert feature documentation from Cargo.toml into your lib.rs.
  2. Insert crate documentation from lib.rs into your README.md.

Table of Contents

Installation

# If you have `cargo-binstall` installed:
cargo binstall cargo-insert-docs

# Otherwise
cargo install cargo-insert-docs

Inserting crate documentation into the README.md requires a nightly toolchain to be installed. See Compatibility. The active toolchain does not need to be nightly. Inserting the feature documentation into the crate and compiling cargo-insert-docs itself does not require a nightly toolchain.

# To be able to insert crate documentation into the readme
rustup install nightly --profile minimal

Usage

Add feature documentation to your Cargo.toml using ## for documentation of individual features and #! to add documentation between features:

[features]
default = ["std", "jpg"]

## Enables loading [`Image`]s from [`std::io::Read`].
std = []

#! ## Image formats
#! The following formats are supported.

## Enables support for jpg images
jpg = []

## Enables support for png images
png = []

Then add a feature documentation section to your lib.rs file:

//! Use the [Image] type to load images.
//!
//! # Feature Flags
//! <!-- feature documentation start -->
//! <!-- feature documentation end -->
//!
//! # Examples
//! ```
//! # use example_crate::Image;
//! let image = Image::load("cat.png");
//! # println!("this won't show up in the readme");
//! ```

And add a crate documentation section to your README.md:

# my-crate-name

Badges go here.

<!-- crate documentation start -->
<!-- crate documentation end -->

License goes there.

Now run cargo-insert-docs:

cargo insert-docs

Then your lib.rs will end up looking like this:

//! Use the [Image] type to load images.
//!
//! # Feature Flags
//! <!-- feature documentation start -->
//! - **`std`** *(enabled by default)* — Enables loading [`Image`]s
//!   from [`std::io::Read`].
//!
//! ## Image formats
//! The following formats are supported.
//!
//! - **`jpg`** *(enabled by default)* — Enables support for jpg images
//! - **`png`** — Enables support for png images
//! <!-- feature documentation end -->
//!
//! # Examples
//! ```
//! # use example_crate::Image;
//! let image = Image::load("cat.png");
//! # println!("this won't show up in the readme");
//! ```

And your README.md will look like that:

# my-crate-name

Badges go here.

<!-- crate documentation start -->
Use the [Image](https://docs.rs/example-crate/0.0.0/example_crate/struct.Image.html) type to load images.

## Feature Flags
<!-- feature documentation start -->
- **`std`** *(enabled by default)* — Enables loading [`Image`](https://docs.rs/example-crate/0.0.0/example_crate/struct.Image.html)s
  from [`std::io::Read`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/trait.Read.html).

### Image formats
The following formats are supported.

- **`jpg`** *(enabled by default)* — Enables support for jpg images
- **`png`** — Enables support for png images
<!-- feature documentation end -->

## Examples
```rust
let image = Image::load("cat.png");
```
<!-- crate documentation end -->

License goes there.

You can see the rendered version here.

Notice how:

  • doc-links like Image and std::io::Read get resolved to links to docs.rs and doc.rust-lang.org
  • the code block loses the hidden (# prefixed) lines
  • the code block gets marked as rust; if the code block already had a marking that is considered rust like compile_fail, ignore, should_panic and such, that would also be replaced by rust
  • headers get one # added

To update the sections just run the command again.

You don't have to add both sections for the tool to work. If it doesn't find a section it will carry on with a warning. You can turn that warning into an error with the --strict flag and disable either job with --no-feature-docs and --no-crate-docs.

You can find all the available arguments in docs/cli.md.

If you'd like to see what it looks like when used by a real crate then have a look at bump-scope's docs.rs and README.md.

FAQ

  • Why not just use #![doc = include_str!("../README.md")]?

    If you're using doc-links cargo-insert-docs has the advantage that it resolves them for you. Linking to the docs manually by writing [Image](https://docs.rs/...) is tedious and rustdoc won't we able to tell you about outdated or otherwise unresolved links.

    Using cargo-insert-docs you can also use code sections with should_panic and compile_fail annotations and hidden lines with it still rendering nice in the readme.

    Furthermore the readme might include things like a header, badges, license that you wouldn't want to include in the crate documentation.

Compatibility

To extract the crate documentation cargo-insert-docs relies on the unstable rustdoc JSON format, which requires a recent Rust nightly toolchain to be installed.

A new nightly release may no longer be compatible with the current version and cargo-insert-docs will need to be updated. Alternatively you can choose a specific nightly version that is known to be compatible using the --toolchain argument.

Compatibility Matrix

Version Understands the rustdoc JSON output of
0.7 — 0.9 nightly-2025-07-16 — ?
0.1 — 0.6 nightly-2025-06-22 — nightly-2025-07-15

Acknowledgements

The comment format for adding feature documentation comes from document-features. document-features is a great tool that allows you to insert feature documentation using a macro like this:

#![doc = document_features::document_features!()]

The idea with the html comment tags to delimit sections comes from cargo-rdme.

Similar projects

License

Licensed under either of:

at your option.

This project includes code adapted from the Rust standard library (https://github.com/rust-lang/rust), Copyright © The Rust Project Developers and cargo (https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo). Those projects are also licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0.

Your contributions

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.