The obvious

To use the maven-site-plugin you need to use.... maven. Maven works by building a pom.xml file. Take a look at the pom.xml file in this project.

You will find the following building blocks that you need in your project:

1. maven-site-plugin Of cource you need the maven site plugin.

   So, within the pluginManagement plugin section place:

    <plugin>
           <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
           <artifactId>maven-site-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>3.7.1</version>
           <configuration>
                   <locales>en</locales>
           </configuration>
           <executions>
                   <execution>
                           <id>attach-descriptor</id>
                           <goals>
                                   <goal>attach-descriptor</goal>
                           </goals>
                   </execution>
           </executions>
           <dependencies>
                   <dependency>
                           <groupId>org.apache.maven.doxia</groupId>
                           <artifactId>doxia-module-markdown</artifactId>
                           <version>1.7</version>
                   </dependency>
           </dependencies>
    </plugin> 

   This will allow maven to build the documentation using the command

   mvn site

2. maven-resources-plugin

   Also in the plugins Section place:

    <plugin>
           <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId> 
           <version>2.7</version>
           <configuration>
           </configuration>
    </plugin>

   This plugin allows us to copy the created site (that is put into the target folder by default) to some other place in the repository. We need to have the html-files in the docs-folder.

   We tell maven that with the following section:

    <resources>
           <resource>
                   <directory>${project.build.directory}/site/</directory>
                   <targetPath>${basedir}/docs/</targetPath>
           </resource>
    </resources>

   In order to initiate the copy process we need to invoke

    mvn resources:resources

   And that is all we need in our pom.xml. Notice that maven will load a bunch of dependencies the first time you run the two maven commands. Also notice that you need to invoke those maven commands on your local copy of the repository, add the generated html files in the docs folder, commit and push

   mvn site
   mvn resources:resources
   git add docs
   git commit -m "Generated docs"
   git push