Publish Jekyll Site To Git Repository

Question

Every time I run Jekyll it destroys the entire contents of the destination folder. The problem with this is that my destination directory is a small git repo from which I use to push to my actual server. Is there a way to stop Jekyll deleting the Git files so that I don't have to generate the contents then copy them over?

Answer 1

You could have:

• your git repo elsewhere (i.e. not in the directory affected by a Jekyll deployment)
• have your script pushing that git repo to your server specify a GIT_WORK_TREE variable with the destination folder as value

In other words, a .git don't have to be necessary in the working tree directory itself.
It can be elsewhere, and your script can refer to the actual working tree through GIT_WORK_TREE or through a --work-tree=<path> option.

If your script is part of the destination directory where Jenkyll copies/erases files, you can do the opposite, and mention where the .git actually is with GIT_DIR variable or with --git-dir=<path> option.

To have new --work-dir as default options to your repo, you can use git-config --add core.worktree ../PATH/, where PATH - path to actual working directory relative to .git.

Answer 2

Have you had a look at the Deployment section of the Jekyll wiki? - https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/Deployment. It clearly explains Jekyll deployment steps.

And why are you pushing from the destination? That is bad! Push it from some other clone.

Answer 3

I also want this setup. Found this pull request to fix Jekyll, making it not delete the .git dir: https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/pull/337

Read my comment there, as:

1. the fix is actually slightly broken (make it .git not .git$)
2. I believe a better solution would be to have this as a configuration variable, to handle other files like .svn.

Anyway, my Jekyll line now reads: dest_files << file unless file =~ /\/\.{1,2}$/ || file =~/\/\.git/

Works great! I'm even using octopress (just change your deploy_dir to be public) and comment out the following lines in Rakefile:

    #  (Dir["#{deploy_dir}/*"]).each { |f| rm_rf(f) }
    #  Rake::Task[:copydot].invoke(public_dir, deploy_dir)
    #  puts "\n## copying #{public_dir} to #{deploy_dir}"
    #  cp_r "#{public_dir}/.", deploy_dir

Now your public dir (instead of _deploy dir) can be your github repo to publish your site (submodule of a branch or my parent repo in my case)

Seems senseless to have public and _deploy with octopress, but I'm happy to hear other reasons why to split public and _deploy dirs - besides Jekyll deleting the .git dir. (I read through the full commit history of octopress, but couldn't find any explanation for why its done this way)