These files comprise the WP-CLI handbook (make.wordpress.org/cli/handbook) and WP-CLI commands directory (developer.wordpress.org/cli/commands).

The documentation is located in GitHub to enable a pull request-based editing workflow.

Long-form documentation (e.g. "Commands cookbook") can be edited directly.

Internal API docs and command pages are generated dynamically from the WP-CLI codebase using the wp handbook series of commands.

Before running these commands the bash script bin/install-packages.sh should be run to install the latest versions of the non-bundled commands in bin/packages. Note wp must point to the target WP-CLI instance, i.e. the phar/git that contains the docblocks to be generated against, and should be run with WP_CLI_PACKAGES_DIR=bin/packages and WP_CLI_CONFIG_PATH=/dev/null.

So for instance to generate all dynamically created documentation against the nightly phar run:

wp cli update --nightly
bin/install_packages.sh
WP_CLI_PACKAGES_DIR=bin/packages WP_CLI_CONFIG_PATH=/dev/null wp handbook gen-all

All documentation is imported automatically into WordPress.org in a two step process:

1. WordPress reads commands-manifest.json or handbook-manifest.json to understand all pages that need to be created.
2. Each WordPress page has a markdown_source attribute specifying a Markdown file to be fetched, converted to HTML, and saved in the database.

For make.wordpress.org/cli, the import process is a WordPress plugin running a WP Cron job every 15 minutes. For developer.wordpress.org/cli, this is a class in the devhub theme running a WP Cron job every 12 hours.