Would it make sense to link to the next version when using to links in the navbar?

[LukasGentele]

I currently have multiple projects using docusaurus v2 and after starting yarn start, the browser opens and I always click on the navbar link "Docs" which in my case leads to /docs/introduction. However, if a project is versioned, I always catch myself being confused when I change something the markdown files, I see docusaurus compile the page but nothing happens in the browser. This is, of course, because I am in the latest stable version but my edits are within the next version.

Should links from the navbar automatically use the next version when in development mode? Are there other options, e.g. letting docusaurus open /docs/next/introduction instead of / when running yarn start?

[slorber]

Hi,

There are other issues related to this (#2302 (comment))

I don't think we should add different behaviors for dev and prod, that could be confusing.

However, I think we should be able to say which version is the "current one" (the one without any version path prefix) using configuration.

So you could do:

currentVersion: isDev ? "next" : undefined 

undefined means it would pick the last versioned version.

Does it make sense to you?

[LukasGentele]

So, I would need the isDev inside docusaurus.config.js. How can I get/determine if isDev == true? If there is a way to do that, I could use a href link instead of to and add the next/ to the link.

[slorber]

In case you are not familiar with node ecosystem, you generally can do that with process.env.NODE_ENV that gives you "development" / "production"

So you could do:

const isDev = process.env.NODE_ENV === "development"

And use isDev where you need to.

[LukasGentele]

Sure, that makes sense. I'm familiar with this env var but I was thinking there was a docusaurus variable isDev or something that tells me if it's running as part of yarn start or as part of yarn build but of course the standard NODE_ENV will do. Didn't think of using that. Thanks! That is an easy fix then.

[LukasGentele]

In case anybody else looks for this, I ended up doing this in docusaurus.config.js:

{
   href: __webpack_public_path__ + 'docs/' + (process.env.NODE_ENV == 'production' ? '' : 'next/') + 'introduction',
   label: 'Docs',
   position: 'left',
   target: '_self'
},

Of course, the __webpack_public_path__ + as well as the + 'introduction' may be different in your case. And there may be a way to do this with to instead of href which I am not aware of.