Pop Tech

A blog with static pages generated by jbake and hosted on Github.

Implementation

jbake is a great framework, it lets you free to choose your tools for the:

• build automation (here Maven with jbake-maven-plugin),
• templating (here Groovy),
• look and feel (here Bootswatch).

This project is based on Y. Bonnel's blog, hosted here. The main changes from it are:

• Use maven-scm-publish-plugin in place of Github Site Plugin: it works even if the Github user profile is not fully filled, see Pourquoi ce blog ? (in french).

• Generate excerpts for the index and feed pages: it requires a helper class (in Xtend) and some scripts (in Groovy) inside the templates. Then no needs to fork jbake or jbake-maven-plugin.

• Share parameters between Maven and jbake-maven-plugin, with a little trick: properties-maven-plugin is used to generate a file custom.properties (which usage is deprecated by jbake) filled with all the Maven properties.

There is an open request on this topic: adding system and pom properties to config object in templates #9 .

• Update assets with Maven, using webjars: the Maven profile webjars will upgrade the libraries.

• Enforce the most recent libraries and plugin: the Maven profile enforce will do all the checking.

• Misc. (i18n, tag counters, escaped rss titles, ...)

Todo

• i18n: to be able to publish the same post in different languages.
• merge storing on Github with publishing using Travis.
• no more XML: Logback is already configurated with Groovy, now Polyglot for Maven can work with Groovy also.

Requirements

Java 8 is required by the pom. But Java 7 should still work.

Maven 3.3.1 or above is required as Maven profiles are managed with maven-profiledep-extension. Still Maven 3.3 or below can be used: all the chained profiles must be specified on the command line, e.g. "-Pbootswatch-pathes -Pminify -Pwebjars" in place of "-Pwebjars".

Display

To see the blog, go on Github gh-pages or on popsuite.

Edit

The posts are stored under src/jbake/content.

They can be written with any of these formats: Markdown, AsciiDoc and HTML.

The jbake documentation is available here.

Build and running

• To update the assets (Bootswatch, SyntaxHighlighter, ...):
  mvn clean process-resources -Pwebjars
   
  With M2Eclipse, see launcher pop-tech_setup_webjars.

• To get excerpt enhancement, popsuite-blog:pop-tech itself must have been installed in the local m2 repository, otherwise do it now:
  mvn clean install
   
  With M2Eclipse, see launcher pop-tech_clean_install.

• To preview the changes:
  mvn clean process-resources jbake:inline
  and go to http://localhost:8083.
   
  With M2Eclipse, see launcher pop-tech_clean_generate_inline.

The port is defined by "jbake.port" in the pom file.

• Before publishing, save the changes on Github.

• To publish the changes:
  mvn clean jbake:generate scm-publish:publish-scm  
  With M2Eclipse, see launcher pop-tech_clean_generate_publish.

References

• Blogguer sous GitHub avec JBake, Youri Ackx, 29/01/2014

• Authoring your blog on GitHub with JBake and Gradle, Cédric Champeau, 03/02/2014

• Migration de blogger à jbake, Yan Bonnel, 02/07/2014

• JBake Maven Plugin Walkthrough

• Extract Webjars static resources with Gradle for jBake (or anything really...), Angel Ruiz, 31/08/2015

• Integration of JBake in Maven – Static Websites, Lisa Pfisterer, 02/04/2015

• Using JBake + Maven to post your blog on GitHub Pages, 06/04/2015

• Baking Your Blog with JBake, Groovy and GitHub, Christopher J. Stehno, 02/09/2015

Credits, licenses, copyright

• Thanks to Cédric Champeau and Yan Bonnel who have shared their blog code.

• Photos : Chaval Brasil (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

• Pop Tech posts are published under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 4.0.

• Groovy templates and Java classes are under Apache 2 license.