Github Pages local build

I’m still not clear on local ownership and permissions when dealing with code development. I’ve been fiddling with jekyll and github pages for a couple weeks now to no avail. I think the issue is that I tried to install the basic ruby using sudo apt-get install which leads to permission trouble later. So I decided to remove everything and install it the right way…

Reinstall ruby.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get remove ruby

I got an error message saying the /var/lib/gems folder was not deleted because it wasn’t empty, so I deleted it manually.

sudo rm -r /var/lib/gems

Make sure everything is gone.

sudo apt-get autoremove

Copy of the procedure from Write permissions for var/lib/gems/ on reinstalling ruby [the right way] using rbenv.

sudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL
rbenv install 2.3.1
rbenv global 2.3.1
ruby -v

Starting with the Github Pages Local Setup article.

ruby --version
gem install bundler
rbenv rehash

At this point I got another error saying that I didn’t have write permission to a folder so I changed ownership.

/home/[username]/.bundle/cache/compact_index/rubygems.org.443.29b0360b937aa4d161703e6160654e47/versions`
sudo chown -R $(whoami):$(whoami) ~/.bundler

Now I can run gem install bundler without issue. Since I was starting from scratch, I initialized a new git repo.

git init web
cd web

Created a Gemfile for bundler to use.

nano Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'github-pages', group: :jekyll_plugins

Then installed the dependencies with bundle.

bundle install

Now you are set to create a blank jekyll template which can be used for local builds on github pages.

jekyll new website

Alternatively, if you wish to use an existing, empty github repo (as I did):

git clone [your_repo_URL]
jekyll new [your_repo_name]
cd [your_repo_name]

Preview the build on a local server at the default 127.0.0.1:4000.

bundle exec jekyll serve

If any errors crop up, add the requisite gem to your Gemfile as I had to do due to a lack of a Java runtime environment.

nano Gemfile

Add the lines at the end of the file.

gem 'execjs'
gem 'therubyracer'

Then install the gems.

bundle install

Rebuild and serve.

bundle exec jekyll serve

As long as everything looks good, commit and push everything to your repo.

git add -A
git commit -a
git push origin

Check your email to make sure everything built as it should -github sends you build error messages. Then check your site at [your_username].github.io.

Update 3/6/18

I received a message from Github stating that one of my dependencies had a security vulnerability. So I had to update my gems. In my git repo folder:

bundle update