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Article Series

Jekyll in General

Jekyll Plain

Where to Discuss?

Local Group

Preface

Goal: Bundling theme in Gem, for use with other people.

Source Code

This article use tutor-07 theme. We will create it step by step.


Introduction

This chapter is a little bit different. We are not talking about just Jekyll anymore, but more about Jekyll in Gemfile, and how to use the Gem properly.

What can be bundled?

  1. _includes, and

  2. _layouts,

And additionaly

  1. assets, and

  2. _sass.

Directory Structure

Now consider make two separate directories:

  1. gem, for theme

  2. src, for Jekyll source

Then move both _includes, and _layouts to gem directory.

$ tree -d -L 2
.
├── gem
│   ├── _includes
│   └── _layouts
└── src
    ├── pages
    ├── _posts
    └── _site

7 directories

It is easier to have directory side by side as above . So you can move from one directory to another, or put something back, whenever there is trouble.

Jekyll: Manage Directories Between Gem and Jekyll Source

I added MIT LICENSE file, just for example sake.


1: Build Gemfile

We need to prepare gemspec, the Ruby Gem specification.

Official Documentation

It is easy to google, this one:

Ruby Gem Specification

Gem::Specification.new do |spec|
  spec.name        = 'oriclone-plain'
  spec.version     = '0.1.0'
  spec.date        = '2020-07-06'
  spec.authors     = ["E.R. Nurwijayadi"]
  spec.email       = 'epsi.nurwijayadi@gmail.com'

  spec.summary     = "Oriclone Plain - Jekyll Theme"
  spec.description = "An example of Jekyll Theme without Stylesheet Burden"
  spec.homepage    = "https://gitlab.com/epsi-rns/tutor-jekyll-plain"
  spec.license     = "MIT"

  require 'rake'
  spec.files       = Dir.glob("{_layouts,_includes}/**/**/*") +
                     ['LICENSE']
end

Jekyll: oriclone-plain.gemspec

The early lines in specification above is just string. The issue comes with files, especially for ruby beginner like me.

Files Specification

How about multiple files in multiple directories?

In a few of article I read in the internet suggest to use git. The issue rise, for my tutorial, because I’m not always put files, in git folder.

  spec.files         = git ls-files -z.split("\x0")... }

But I finally find a way to glob, even though I never see any gem using this method.

  require 'rake'
  spec.files       = Dir.glob("{_layouts,_includes}/**/**/*") +
                     ['LICENSE']

Sorry for my Ruby skill.

Bundle Theme in Gem

Just as the official document said:

$ cd gem
$ gem build oriclone-plain.gemspec
  Successfully built RubyGem
  Name: oriclone-plain
  Version: 0.1.0
  File: oriclone-plain-0.1.0.gem

Jekyll: gem build oriclone-plain.gemspec

You should see a file named oriclone-plain-0.1.0.gem pop up, in directory.

Install Bundled Theme

Now install, the theme we just bundled.

$ gem install ./oriclone-plain-0.1.0.gem
Successfully installed oriclone-plain-0.1.0
Parsing documentation for oriclone-plain-0.1.0
Installing ri documentation for oriclone-plain-0.1.0
Done installing documentation for oriclone-plain after 1 seconds
1 gem installed

Jekyll: gem install ./oriclone-plain-0.1.0.gem

Check The Installation.

Now install, the theme we just bundled.

$ ls ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.6.5/gems | grep oriclone
oriclone-plain-0.1.0

$ tree -d -L 1 ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.6.5/gems/oriclone-plain-0.1.0
/home/epsi/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.6.5/gems/oriclone-plain-0.1.0
├── _includes
└── _layouts

2 directories

Just make sure the theme is there .

Jekyll: Gems in RVM

I believe we are ready to use the gem theme.


2: Using Gemfile

This require changing in both Gemfile and _config.yml.

Gemfile

Now we can get rid of minima, and use our very own theme.

source "https://rubygems.org"
gem "jekyll", "~> 4.1.1"

# gem "minima", "~> 2.0"
gem "oriclone-plain", "~> 0.1.0"

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem "jekyll-paginate"
# gem "jekyll-paginate-v2"
end

Jekyll: Gemfile in Jekyll Source Directory

$ bundle install
...
Using jekyll 4.1.1
Using jekyll-paginate 1.1.0
Using oriclone-plain 0.1.0
Bundle complete! 3 Gemfile dependencies, 30 gems now installed.
Use `bundle info [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed.

Jekyll: Source Directory: bundle install

Configuration

# Custom Gem Theme
theme: oriclone-plain

Now run jekyll serve. Your site should working properly.

Jekyll: Qutebrowser: Home

Just be aware that, not every _includes or even _layouts, should be moved to Gem theme. For flexibility reason, some shortcodes, or other _includes, that tightly closed to content, or assets, or change regularly, should be better to be placed outside bundle.


Conclusion

We are done with jekyll plain, but we still have jekyll with stylesheet to cover. Let’s put on clothes to our plain jekyll, and make the blog looks fashionable.

The direct chain of this theme bundling article is: either [ Jekyll Bootstrap - CSS Intro ], or [ Jekyll Bulma MD - CSS Intro ].


What is Next?

For now, consider make your site live, and continue later with stylesheet. Consider continue reading [ Jekyll Plain - Deploy - Simple ].

Thank you for reading.