[CT-3105] [Feature] Generate static documentation (static_index.html)

[mescanne]

Is this your first time submitting a feature request?

• I have read the expectations for open source contributors
• I have searched the existing issues, and I could not find an existing issue for this feature
• I am requesting a straightforward extension of existing dbt functionality, rather than a Big Idea better suited to a discussion

Describe the feature

Static webpages (all resources bundled within them) are very useful -- you can inspect them directly without starting a webbrowser, and they can be served by e.g. object stores.

There is a long-standing feature request in dbt-docs for this here. I have created a PR within dbt-docs and will be creating a PR within dbt-core based on its output.

Describe alternatives you've considered

External tools (as described in the dbt-docs issue) can be created, but this is ugly and a hack.

In terms of doing this properly (within dbt itself), I considered a few other alternatives -- delayed webpack, bundling within Python (dbt-core), but all of these are both very complicated, different to how things are working now.

Who will this benefit?

See the history of dbt-docs issue for some of the benefits.

One specific example is hosting in Google Cloud Storage buckets -- a static index.html can be directly shared using GCP permissions, while one that retrieves manifest.json and catalog.json cannot. The bucket must either be public (usually undesirable) or exposed through a webserver (more complex).

Are you interested in contributing this feature?

Yes. PR will be attached.

Anything else?

No response