Running Jekyll in Docker

According to the official documentation og jekyll, Jekyll is a blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby and in order to install it you need to ensure that you have the

• correct version of Ruby installed
• RubyGems installed
• GCC / Make installed

If you’re not familiar with these tools (ruby , gem, bundle, ….) then getting up and running can be time consuming. But if you are familiar with docker run command is the only pre requisite to make app up and running with the jekyll/jekyll docker image.

Preface

This post assumes that you have some basic understanding of Docker/Podman, Docker Compose, and the key components used in the docker ecosystem. Get up to speed, with the Prepare Your Container Environment with Docker or Podman section of Docker docs.

1. Install Docker or Podman
2. install Docker Compose

Create the jekyll app

export JEKYLL_VERSION=3.8
mkdir -p $PWD/path/of/new/app; cd $PWD/path/of/new/app
docker run --rm --volume="$PWD:/srv/jekyll" -it jekyll/jekyll:$JEKYLL_VERSION jekyll new .

What happened here ?

• We’ve started a docker jekyll container
• We’ve mounted the current folder as /srv/jekyll in the container
• We’ve passed the jekyll new command
• A new site was created in the current folder by the container

Build the app

docker run --rm --volume="$PWD:/srv/jekyll" -it jekyll/jekyll:$JEKYLL_VERSION jekyll build

RUN

• create a docker-compose file for the application

cat << EOF > docker-compose.yaml

version: '3'
services:
  site:
    container_name: jinnabalu
    command: jekyll serve --watch --drafts
    image: jekyll/jekyll:latest
    volumes:
      - $PWD:/srv/jekyll
    ports:
      - 4000:4000
EOF

• run

docker-ompose up -d

Application will be running on http://localhost:4000 or http://127.0.0.1:4000

Install Gems

Option #1 : Post running, if we want to install anything manually

docker exec -ti jinnabalu gem install "jekyll-theme-hydeout"

Oprion #2 : If you want to deploy automatically, update `Gemfile’

group :jekyll_plugins do
   gem "jekyll-feed", "~> 0.6"
   gem "jekyll-gist", "~> 1.4"
   gem "jekyll-paginate", "~> 1.1"
   gem "jekyll-theme-hydeout", "~> 3.4"   
end

Next, in our _config.yml file, we’ll enable pagination, set the theme to jekyll-theme-hydeout add add some plugins

paginate:5

# Build settings
markdown: kramdown
theme: jekyll-theme-hydeout
plugins:
  - jekyll-feed
  - jekyll-gist
  - jekyll-paginate  

restart the service

docker-compose down

docker-compose up -d