After an introduction to convenient calculus in infinite dimensions, the foundational material for manifolds of mappings is presented. The central character is the smooth convenient manifold C ∞ (M, N ) of all smooth mappings from a finite dimensional Whitney manifold germ M into a smooth manifold N . A Whitney manifold germ is a smooth (in the interior) manifold with a very general boundary, but still admitting a continuous Whitney extension operator. This notion is developed here for the needs of geometric continuum mechanics.