Skip to content

# mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin

MkDocs plugin that enables displaying the date of the last git modification of a page. The plugin uses babel and timeago.js to provide different localized date formats. Works with `mkdocs-material`, see adding a git repository.

(Example when used together with the mkdocs-material theme)

## Setup

Install the plugin using `pip3` with the following command:

    pip3 install mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin

Next, add the following lines to your `mkdocs.yml`:

    plugins:
      - search
      - git-revision-date-localized

> If you have no `plugins` entry in your config file yet, you'll likely also want to add the `search` plugin. MkDocs enables it by default if there is no `plugins` entry set.

The mkdocs-material theme supports `git-revision-date-localized`. After installing the plugin and updating your `mkdocs.yml` you should see the last revision date on the bottom of your pages. Other mkdocs themes require additional customization.

See the documentation on how to fine-tune the appearance and the date format.

### Note when using build systems like Github Actions

This plugin needs access to the last commit that touched a specific file to be able to retrieve the date. By default many CI/CD build systems only retrieve the last commit, which means you might need to change your CI/CD settings:

- Github Actions: set `fetch-depth` to `0` (docs)
- Gitlab Runners: set `GIT_DEPTH` to `0` (docs)
- Bitbucket pipelines: set `clone: depth: full` (docs)
- Azure Devops pipelines: set `Agent.Source.Git.ShallowFetchDepth` to something very high like `10e99` (docs)

Tip: You can speed up your builds for large codebases by running git garbage collection (`git gc`) occasionly. You can also use sparse checkouts to only apply the fetch-depth 0 for the folders we're interested (credits Martin in this tweet):

    # example sparse checkout for github actions
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        fetch-depth: 0
        sparse-checkout: |
          docs
          includes

## Documentation

See timvink.github.io/mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin.

## Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before putting in any work.

## Related MkDocs plugins:

- mkdocs-git-authors-plugin for displaying the authors from git
- mkdocs-git-committers-plugin-2 for displaying authors' github user profiles
- mkdocs-document-dates for displaying dates based on file creation and modification dates.
- Initial fork from mkdocs-git-revision-date-plugin.