Contributing to the docs

Stack 9.0.0

The Beats documentation is written in Markdown and is built using elastic/docs-builder. Most Markdown files should be edited directly, but some Markdown files are generated.

After updating docs.md files in _meta directories, you must run the doc collector scripts to regenerate the docs.

Make sure you set up your Beats development environment and use the correct Go version. The Go version is listed in the version.asciidoc file for the branch you want to update.

To run the docs collector scripts, change to the beats directory and run:

make update

To format your files, you might also need to run this command:

make fmt

The make command calls the following scripts to generate the docs:

auditbeat/scripts/docs_collector.py generates:

• docs/reference/auditbeat/auditbeat-modules.md
• docs/reference/auditbeat/auditbeat-module-*.md

filebeat/scripts/docs_collector.py generates:

• docs/reference/filebeat/filebeat-modules.md
• docs/reference/filebeat/filebeat-module-*.md

metricbeat/scripts/mage/docs_collector.go generates:

• docs/reference/metricbeat/metricbeat-modules.md
• docs/reference/metricbeat/metricbeat-module-*.md

libbeat/scripts/generate_fields_docs.py generates:

• docs/reference/auditbeat/exported-fields.md
• docs/reference/filebeat/exported-fields.md
• docs/reference/heartbeat/exported-fields.md
• docs/reference/metricbeat/exported-fields.md
• docs/reference/packetbeat/exported-fields.md
• docs/reference/winlogbeat/exported-fields.md