Remove GitBook project template

Problem to solve

The project template for GitBook makes it really easy to create a new project using gitbook. But apparently the used gitbook-cli is now longer actively maintained. The last release was 3 years ago and the maintainers do no longer actively work on this project.

GitLab should not promote a tool stacks that do not have any foreseeable future and does not get security and bug fixes. Specially not for starting new projects.

Further details

Apparently the the gitbook tool was reimplemented as a software as a service offering and is now longer indented to be a static self-hostable documentation generator.

We have moved away from the static site generator model, and no longer use gitbook CLI to build documentation output.

...

V2 cannot be self-hosted but is a cloud solution only. You can read everything about our terms and services in our docs.

https://docs.gitbook.com/resources/gitbook-legacy/v2-differences#cli-toolchain

Proposal

Remove Pages/GitBook from the list of possible project templates.

Links / references

• https://gitlab.com/pages/nfgitbook
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/gitbook-cli
• https://www.gitbook.com/

ToDo:

• Find any existing data around the actual usage of this template over time
• Decide if we need to remove Netlify/GitBook, in addition to Pages/GitBook (thread below)
• Determine if deprecation warnings need to be sent before removing the template and what is the communication plan