Github/Jekyll site update via Rake

I wanted a quick way to provide useful comments on commits made in development of a Jekyll site which is deployed on GitHub. This method offers a couple of rake tasks to first quickly build the site locally, placing the output into the docs folder; then to commit and push the changes to GitHub once you’re happy. All of this code goes in the Rakefile.

Build

require 'rubygems'
require 'rake'
require 'rdoc'
require 'date'
require 'yaml'
require 'tmpdir'
require 'jekyll'

desc "Generate blog files"
task :generate do
  Jekyll::Site.new(Jekyll.configuration({
    "source"      => ".",
    "destination" => "docs"
  })).process
end

You can build and test your site in your development machine (I’m using a Mac) using a python http server to render the static site thus:

$ rake generate
Configuration file: /your/path/to/GitHub/projectname/_config.yml
$ cd docs/
$ python3 -m http.server

Deploy

You should place an empty .nojekyll file in the root of your project to tell GitHub not to bother rebuilding the site. You’re just deploying static files to the docs folder. Once you’re ready to deploy, you can publish via rake. The rest of the Rakefile looks like this:

# Usage:
# $ rake
# $ rake generate
# $ rake publish
# $ rake publish["Your comment here"]

desc "Generate and publish blog to master/docs"
task :publish, [:var] => [:generate] do |task, args|
  args.with_defaults(var: 'Commit via Rake')
Dir.mktmpdir do |tmp|
    system "mv docs/* #{tmp}"
    system "git checkout -B master"
    system "rm -rf docs/*"
    system "mv #{tmp}/* docs"
    system "git add ."
    system "git commit -a -m #{args.var.inspect}"
    system "git push origin master --force"
    system "git checkout master"
    system "echo Finished."
  end
end

task :default => :publish

For example, you might publish using this command from the project folder:

$ rake publish["Example updates"]
(in /your/path/to/GitHub/projectname/)
Configuration file: /your/path/to/GitHub/projectname/_config.yml
D	docs/yyyy/mm/dd/some-files.html
....
Reset branch 'master'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
[master abcdefg] Example updates
 n files changed, p insertions(+), q deletions(-)
Enumerating objects: r, done.
Counting objects: 100% (nn/nn), done.
Delta compression using up to x threads
Compressing objects: 100% (mm/mm), done.
Writing objects: 100% (mm/mm), 1234 bytes | 123.00 KiB/s, done.
Total mm (delta nn), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (nn/nn), completed with nn local objects.
To https://github.com/YourGHName/projectname.git
   0aa7f2g..abcdefg  master -> master
Already on 'master'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
Finished.

Notice a call to publish will also generate the site for you. If you’re in a hurry, just issue rake to get the default Commit via Rake commit message.