archive

An archive of projects, experiments, and creative dead-ends.

This is also a lazy static site generator designed around how I manage my project documentation. The main branch has the site generator and the archive branch has the site content.

Motivation

I want to share all of my projects but it takes a lot of time to write articles about them. On GitHub every project can have a README to provide at least some minimal context about what's going on. What if I could just do that for every project, regardless of whether it makes sense to make a GitHub repository for each one?

This simple static site generator will find project directories which contain README files and create pages for them. Media files that are linked relative to the README will be included in the output. The resulting website can be uploaded to GitHub Pages or any other static site host.

Usage

Create a config.yml file like so:

output_directory: docs
project_directories:
  - "/your/cool/stuff"

Then run python update.py. The static site will appear under the path specified for the output_directory key.

Rebuilding on Changes

While adding new READMEs it is convenient to have the output update automatically.

Install yq and nodemon.

Then run:

nodemon --ext md --watch "$(yq e '.project_directories[0]' config.yml)" --exec "rm -rf docs && python3 update.py"