arc42 - the template for effective, practical and pragmatic software architecture documentation and communication.
Initially created by Dr. Gernot Starke and Dr. Peter Hruschka (way back in 2005…), free and open source.
This repository contains the (AsciiDoc) source of the arc42 template.
It is used…
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as the basis for generating (by the arc42-generator project) the official download formats (i.e. docx, markdown, docbook and others). To generate, THIS repo is included as submodule from the generator project; see Build a Local Version for a preview of your changes.
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to maintain structure, content and help for the template
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to keep non-asciidoc, non-generable formats (like Sparx® Enterprise-Architect® EAP) in
other-formats/.
In case you find issues within the template or its explanations, this is the repo to fix and issue pull requests :-)
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November 2025: first Chinese version
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9.0: July 2025:
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Clarified and re-structured section 10 (Quality Requirements) to include overview (10.1) and details (10.2).
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Unified concept-image in section 8.
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Unified usage of revision number by adding version.properties file to every language.
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Reworked the local build to facilitate translations
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8.2: Jan 28th 2023: Thx to A. Bentele, added imagedir def to all files, for easier editing asciidoc. See #178
We intend to provide all diagrams in platform-neutral formats, mainly drawio.
The source of these diagrams is embedded in a .png file. To make this explicit, we use the combined extension .drawio.png for our diagrams.
The drawio tools will recognize this and open such files in the editor instead of an image viewer.
Therefore we will gradually remove all files under ./graphics-originals
Please refer to the official download page for all downloads.
The downloads are published as GitHub Releases of this repository, built by the arc42-generator (make release). Every release contains all languages, styles (plain, with help) and formats, plus a manifest.json with versions and SHA-256 checksums. File names do not change between releases, so this link always serves the newest file:
https://github.com/arc42/arc42-template/releases/latest/download/arc42-template-<LANG>-<plain|withhelp>-<format>.zip
for example https://github.com/arc42/arc42-template/releases/latest/download/arc42-template-EN-withhelp-asciidoc.zip. The generated files are no longer committed here; the former dist/ folder was removed in September 2026 (links to raw/master/dist/… no longer work).
Hand-made templates for other tools (Enterprise Architect, Confluence, IBM Rhapsody, Doxygen) are kept in other-formats/ and published in their own release (tag tools-…).
The EN and DE versions are actively maintained by the founders (G.Starke & P.Hruschka). Translations to additional languages (see below) have been provided by volunteers, but won’t be automatically updated.
The following languages are currently available:
| Language | Translator | Available Since |
|---|---|---|
Czech (CZ) |
jakub_rc <jakub.tomisek@gmail.com> |
2022-10-12 |
Chinese (ZH) |
Chris (Gentle) Y杨 (nodexy@gmail.com) with DannyGe |
2025-10-30 |
Traditional Chinese (ZH-TW) |
Sophie (@sophieyin0310) |
2026-09-25 |
Dutch (NL) |
2022-05-01 |
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English (EN) |
Gernot Starke, Peter Hruschka (founders) |
2005 |
Spanish (ES) |
Isidoro (isidoro.trevino@vintec.mx) |
2017-09-19 |
French (FR) |
Damien Lucas (d.lucas@groupeonepoint.com) |
2023-06-05 |
German (DE) |
Gernot Starke, Peter Hruschka (founders) |
2005 |
Hungarian (HU) |
László Séra (laszlo.sera@gmail.com) |
2026-05-14 |
Italian (IT) |
Mario Giustiniani (mariogiustiniani@gmail.com) |
2021-04-04 |
Dutch (NL) |
Maarten Verburg (verburg.maarten@gmail.com) |
2022-05-01 |
Portuguese (PT) |
Guilherme Weizenmann (g.weizenmann@gmail.com) |
2024-09-10 |
Russian (RU) |
Various contributors, <nerilin@cinimex.ru>, max.arshinov@gmail.com |
2018-11-14 |
Ukrainian (UKR) |
Ivan Bulyk, Larysa Visengeriyeva (visenger@gmail.com) |
2024-11-10 |
The template is built by the arc42-generator, which also produces the official downloads. It needs only make and Docker. To preview your changes (for example a translation) in HTML or PDF:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/arc42/arc42-generator.git cd arc42-generator make image # once: the Docker image with all tools # the template to build: newest main, or your branch make template-update git -C arc42-template fetch https://github.com/<you>/arc42-template.git <branch> git -C arc42-template checkout FETCH_HEAD make generate FORMAT=html # or FORMAT=pdf; without FORMAT: all 15 formats make templates OPTS=--lint=warn # only check the template (conditionals, help blocks, images, version.properties)
The output is in build/<LANG>/<format>/<plain|with-help>/, e.g. build/DE/html/with-help/arc42-template.html or build/ZH-TW/pdf/plain/arc42-template-ZH-TW.pdf. See the generator README for all targets.
Every pull request to this repository is checked by the same generator (workflow Golden master validation): problems appear as annotations on the file and line.
<root>/ ├── <LC>/ // one folder per language, e.g. EN, DE, ZH-TW │ ├── arc42-template.adoc // main document │ ├── version.properties // revnumber, revdate, revdate-iso (YYYY-MM), revremark │ ├── adoc/ // chapter files │ └── images/ // images of this language ├── common/ // shared files (styles) ├── other-formats/<tool>/ // hand-made templates: Confluence, Doxygen, Enterprise Architect, Rhapsody └── graphics-originals/ // original diagram sources (being phased out)
Create a folder <LC>/ like the ones above (a code such as TR, optionally with a region such as ZH-TW), with all four version.properties entries, and add it to the table under Languages. The generator finds it on its own; nothing else needs to change.
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see the extensive documentation website
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see the overview