mdserve is a Markdown webserver. It's pointed to a directory; all assets in that directory become available through HTTP, Markdown files are converted to HTML on the fly. Nothing is stored on disk, the directory isn't cluttered with state files. Files are updated as soon as they're changed on disk, it's enough to refresh the page to get the latest version.

mdserve is as easy as it gets: If mdserve is called without any arguments, it's started with the current working directory as web root directory and an URL (which can be openend on the browser of choice) is printed. The URL either points to the root directory (the server will return 403, the user must enter the path to a Markdown file by hand) or to an index.md file, if available.

Command line options:

• -a: Listen address. Must be given with port, e.g. 10.0.0.1:8080. Defaults to localhost:8080.
• -d: Web root directory, defaults to ..
• -j: Use an alternative CSS with centered text and auto hyphenation.
• -l: Language for typography and hyphenation, defaults to de. Currently de and en are supported.
• -q: Be quiet, suppress console output.

mdserve is build around the Goldmark CommonMark parser. It implements Github Flavoured Markdown: https://github.github.com/gfm/

Some other extensions are available:

• Definition lists: https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/#def-list
• Footnotes: https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/#footnotes
• Highlighting of fenced code blocks.
• KaTeX math: https://katex.org/
• WikiLinks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink#Wikis

You'll need the go tools in version 1.18 or higher.

1. Clone the Github repo into a local directory and change into it.
2. Compile the executable: go build ./cmd/mdserve