Get projects plugin to pick up new projects

[alexvoss]

Context

When working with the projects plugin, a newly created project is not getting picked up. While it is relatively easy to trigger a re-build by touching the main mkdocs.yml, it would be nice if new projects were picked up automatically.

It is debatable whether this constitutes a bug or a change request. I went with the latter since this should not be blocker for anyone.

Description

I am proposing to add something to the configuration of the file system watcher that would identify a new subdirectory in the projects_dir. Looking at the documentation of the watchdog library used, it seems this should be possible.

Related links

• Requesting a change
• https://python-watchdog.readthedocs.io/en/stable/api.html#watchdog.events.FileSystemEventHandler.on_created
• https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material-insiders/blob/199b01479f8770cee3a3b3456edf0103c68bd468/src/plugins/projects/plugin.py#L336

Use Cases

This applies for any use of the projects plugin. It may be more important to some uses than others, since in some there will be plenty new subprojects being created all the time, while other users may have a limited and static set of subprojects.

Visuals

No response

Before submitting

• I have read and followed the change request guidelines.
• I have verified that my idea is a change request and not a bug report.
• I have ensured that, to the best of my knowledge, my idea will benefit the entire community.
• I have included relevant links to the documentation, related issues, and discussions to underline the need for my idea.

[squidfunk]

Thanks for suggesting! I must say, I just love your usability suggestions – this one is definitely a must have.

[squidfunk]

Fixed in f1cb613. 🫠 I've invested the last 4 days to refactor the projects plugin and pave the way for more complex interactions and modes between projects. Although I'm already happy with the result, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but I'll fix this on the way. The most important problem here was to improve the user experience.

Additionally, projects are now automatically resolved and built in topological order, which means that nested index pages are also possible now. I've developed a scalable approach that is based on tainting projects for rebuilding. Currently, a file change taints a project, and schedules it for rebuild in the next iteration, however tainting can also be done programatically.

What was particularly tricky was not only to pick up new projects, but to add them to the watched files, so that you can start editing right away. Bonus points for the "Rückrichtung": same is true for removing projects, so if you delete a project, it'll be automatically unwatched.

[squidfunk]

Released as part of 9.5.2+insiders-4.47.1.

[alexvoss]

You are on fire, dude! Thanks for doing this.