Using `make' to Manage Jekyll

Recently I switched from using Wordpress to Jekyll. I noticed a general trend of using rake for managing the generation and deployment of the website. Lately I’ve become quite fond of straight Makefiles, and ported their concepts and utilities.

The resulting Makefile is fairly basic, but performs essential operations:

clean: Delete the locally built files
build: Generate the website files locally (automatically runs clean)
push: Push the generated files to the remote server. This uses scp by default.
new: Generate a new Markdown document in _posts. Pass TOPIC="foo" to change the name of the generated post (new article by default).

To use this Makefile with Jekyll, just reconfigure the REMOTEHOST and REMOTEDIR parameters at the bottom of the file with your own settings.

deploy: build push

help:
	@echo "You may provide several parameters, like:"
	@echo "make [target] KEY=\"value\""
	@echo ""
	@echo "The following parameters are available (with the defaults): "
	@echo "REMOTEHOST=$(REMOTEHOST)"
	@echo "REMOTEDIR=$(REMOTEDIR)"
	@echo ""
	@echo "You may provide the TOPIC variable to the 'new' target."
	@echo ""

.PHONY: clean
clean:
	rm -rf _site/*

push:
	scp -r _site/* $(REMOTE)
	growlnotify -m "BLOG: Uploaded."

build: clean
	jekyll
	chmod -R 755 _site/*
	growlnotify -m "BLOG: Built."

serve: clean
	jekyll --server

new:
	echo "---" >> $(FILE)
	echo "title: $(TOPIC)" >> $(FILE)
	echo "layout: post" >> $(FILE)
	echo "published: false" >> $(FILE)
	echo "---" >> $(FILE)
	open $(FILE)

# Change these settings for your own use, for example:
# REMOTEHOST ?= yourwebsite.com
# REMOTEDIR ?= /path/to/your/webroot
# Note the lack of a / on webroot
REMOTEHOST ?= yakko
REMOTEDIR ?= ~/grahamc.com/main/public
REMOTE = $(REMOTEHOST):$(REMOTEDIR)

TOPIC ?= new article
FILE = $(shell date "+./_posts/%Y-%m-%d-$(TOPIC).markdown" | sed -e y/\ /-/)

This Makefile also utilizes the Mac program Growl. If you don’t use a Mac (or don’t have Growl, remove the growlnotify lines.)

posted on December 25 2010