[dprotaso]

Replace the vendored Material JavaScript bundle used for Knative's directory-based version selector with upstream Material assets and a small hook/template implementation.

This is a focused follow-up to #6722. Its scope is limited to:

1. Remove patched Material JavaScript.
2. Introduce a hook-based documentation version selector.

No multi-version local-preview preparation, hot-reload tooling, or dependency-aware incremental builds are included. Those remain on the separate development branch.

Proposed Changes

• Remove the patched bundle, custom directory provider, and inline rewriting of Material's __config JSON. Inherit the installed theme's normal JavaScript and asset configuration.
• Build version links from the existing versions.json manifest and rendered page/anchor data using a MkDocs hook.
• Render an accessible native dropdown with Material styling, normal-weight version text, keyboard/outside-click dismissal, and an opaque popup above the navigation tabs.
• Preserve the same page, query string, and valid fragment when switching versions; fall back to the selected version's homepage when that page does not exist. Hide the selector on unversioned pages; show (Pre-release) even in single-version deploy previews.
• Generate the manifest before rendering so the hook can read it; MkDocs copies it into the site without changing its public format or URL. Release assembly and directory layout otherwise remain unchanged.

Validation

• ./hack/mkdocs.sh build --strict against current main.
• Strict multi-version fixture build.
• Chrome checks: upstream search/assets, same-page/query/fragment switching, missing-page fallback, desktop/mobile click targets, outside-click dismissal, and hidden homepage selector.

Full multi-release assembly and registry publishing were not exercised for this PR.

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[knative-prow]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: dprotaso

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• OWNERS [dprotaso]

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[dprotaso]

/hold

[dprotaso]

/assign @evankanderson this is ready for review. Take a look at the preview.

I added a temporary commit so it will do a full build showing the dropdowns in the netlify preview. I'll want to remove prior to merging.

[evankanderson]

This is much better than what I did, thank you!

[evankanderson]

Does this need to be removed at this point?

[dprotaso]

I'd keep it because of netlify getting rate limited by github breaks our deploy builds

[evankanderson]

/hold

[dprotaso]

/hold cancel

I removed the TEMP commit now