mdBook/book-example/src/cli/init.md

The init command

The init command, used like this:

mdbook init

Will create a couple of files and directories in the working directory so that you can spend more time writing your book and less setting it up.

The files set up for you are the following:

book-test/
├── book
└── src
    ├── chapter_1.md
    └── SUMMARY.md

The src directory is were you write your book in markdown. It contains all the source files, configuration files, etc.

The book directory is where your book is rendered. All the output is ready to be uploaded to a serer to be seen by the internet.

The SUMMARY.md file is the most important file, it's the skeleton of your book. It's so important that it has it's own chapter.

Specify a directory

When using the init command, you can also specify a directory, instead of using the current directory, by appending a path to the command:

mdbook init path/to/book

Not yet implemented

In the future I would like mdBook init to be able to:

• Copy the default theme to the src directory in a theme directory when using a flag like --theme. The user could then tweak the theme to his needs.
• Generate files that are in SUMMARY.md. If the user has already created a SUMMARY.md file and added some entries but did not create the corresponding files, init command should create the files for him.