Description

The Spring Security reference guide is currently available only as HTML at
https://docs.spring.io/spring-security/reference/. Other Spring projects (Spring Boot, Spring Framework, Spring AI, etc.) already expose a downloadable PDF version, but Spring Security does not provide a “PDF” button or a public spring-security-reference.pdf file.

Why a PDF is needed

  • Offline consumption – many developers work in environments with limited or no internet access (e.g., on‑premise labs, airline Wi‑Fi) and need a local copy of the security guide.
  • Print‑friendly – training sessions, security workshops, and internal audit reviews often rely on printed material.
  • Ecosystem consistency – a PDF link would align Spring Security’s documentation experience with the rest of the Spring portfolio.
  • Stable citation – a version‑specific PDF gives a reliable reference for books, blog posts, compliance documentation, and knowledge‑base articles.

https://docs.spring.io/spring-security/reference/pdf/spring-security-reference.pdf

Suggested implementation

  1. Generate the PDF from the existing AsciiDoc source (spring-security-docs/src/main/asciidoc/).
  2. Spring Security already builds its HTML docs with Asciidoctor; adding an asciidoctorPdf task (or the equivalent Gradle/Maven plugin) would produce spring-security-reference.pdf.

  3. Publish the PDF alongside the HTML docs using the same URL pattern that other projects use, e.g.:

  4. Add a “PDF” link/icon to the top navigation bar of the docs site, mirroring the UI of Spring Boot and Spring Framework.

Affected version(s)

The change should be applied to the current GA release (e.g. 6.3.x) and automatically rolled forward to all future releases.

Additional context

  • A comparable enhancement request for Spring AI is tracked here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-ai/issues/??? (PDF generation not yet present).
  • The Spring Security documentation is already version‑controlled, so adding a PDF generation step does not interfere with existing builds.

Desired outcome

  • A downloadable PDF for every released version of Spring Security.
  • (Optional) Publish the PDF as a Maven/Gradle artifact (spring-security-docs with classifier pdf) so users can retrieve it programmatically.

Thank you for reviewing this proposal!