Sake 🍣

A simple static site generator built with make.

Concept

I created this site generator because I wanted something to use for simple projects, which aren't always blogs, so I didn't want to mess with other site generators, which are usually complex because they have too many features (or are just bloated, like jekyll).

The goal was to make it as simple as possible without sacrificing usability.

Name

If you are curious about the name "sake", it's an acronym of the words Site and Make.

Sake means salmon in Japanese (鮭/さけ).

Deps

make

make is used for building everything.

• Official website: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/

make can be installed from various distro repos.

jinja2

jinja2 is used for processing template files (*.j2).

It's a python library, but I'm using a standalone command-line implementation.

• Official website: https://jinja.palletsprojects.com
• CLI website: https://github.com/mattrobenolt/jinja2-cli

jinja2-cli can be installed from source using pip:

pip install jinja2-cli

fd

fd is used for finding project resources recursively.

It's an user-friendly alternative to find.

• Official website: https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

fd can be installed from various distro repos.

It can also be installed from source using cargo:

cargo install fd-find

jq

jq is used for parsing JSON data.

• Official website: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

jq can be installed from various distro repos.

yj

yj is used for converting data from YAML to JSON.

• Official website: https://github.com/bruceadams/yj

yj can be installed from source using cargo:

cargo install yj

Basic Usage

After installing all deps, just copy/link the Makefile to your project directory.

Run init task to initialise a sample with basic configs:

make init

Then build the project running the default task:

make

All processed files will be saved to out/ directory.

Project Structure

Basic directory structure

• /: project base directory
  • Makefile: all build processes are defined here
  • src/: all static resources (html, js, css etc) and templates (*.j2) are stored here
  • site.yml: all site variables are defined in this file (equivalent to jekyll's _config.yml)
  • build.mk: optional Makefile to define custom build settings like input/output directories, includes and excludes (this file is automatically included in the main Makefile)

Sources directory

All files in the src/ directory are processed as follows:

• If the file ends with *.j2, it will be processed by the template engine and saved in the output directory using the same path structure, but without the .j2 extension.
  • Eg: The file src/page01/index.html.j2 will be processed and saved to out/page01/index.html
• All other files (any extension other than *.j2 and *.meta) will be copied to the output directory as is.

Includes

Includes are optional.

All layouts and other utils must be stored outside of the src/ directory.

The includes directories can have any structure, just make sure they are registered in the build.mk file.

Eg: If you have two include folders, layouts/ and utils/, add the following line to the build.mk file:

INCLUDES := layouts utils

NOTE: the layouts and other includes are equivalent to jekyll's _layouts and _includes directories.

Layouts

Layouts are optional.

You can create layouts by creating templates (.j2) that follow the Jinja2 Child Template format.

See more about Jinja2 Child Template here: https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/2.11.x/templates/#child-template

Store all layouts outside of the src/ directory. Follow the rules for includes mentioned above.

Data

Site data

All data added to the site.yml file can be accessed within any template (.j2) using the site object.

Eg: If you want to print the site title:

<title>{{ site.title }}</title>

NOTE: the site.yml file is equivalent to the jekyll's _config.yml file.

Template Metadata

Template metadata is optional.

Templates can have metadata such as page title, date, tags etc.

Metadata is accessible within the template (.j2) and is most useful if you are using layouts.

Metadata is stored in a .meta file along with the template files.

It uses the same YAML syntax as site.yml.

Eg: If you want to add metadata to a template called index.html.j2:

• Create a file called index.html.meta in the same directory.

Metadata example:

title: About Me
tags: [page, about]

Metadata variables are accessed within the template using the page object.

Eg: If you want to print the page title:

<h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>

NOTE: metadata files are equivalent to jekyll's front matter.

Custom Data

Custom data are optional.

You can create custom data files that can be accessed in any template.

Custom data can be stored in any directory outside the src/ directory, just make sure it's registered in the build.mk file.

Eg: If your custom data directory is called data/, add the following line to the build.mk file:

DATA := data

All custom data must be created using YAML syntax and stored with the .yml extension.

All custom data can be accessed within any template (.j2) using the data object.

Eg: If you have custom data saved as data/authors.yml, you can access it like this:

{% for author in data.authors %}
<p>{{ author.name }}</p>
{% endfor %}

NOTE: custom data files are equivalent to jekyll's data files.

Showcase

Projects already using Sake:

• GDScript Playground
• MANGA Plus Top 40