Blog test setup

How the blog was created from minimal-mistakes, set up locally in Docker for a sandpit to test in.

The blog is hosted on GitHub pages, started by cloning the minimal-mistakes template. This gives a great starting place - you just need to add your posts, set some minor configuration (like selecting a theme) and you’re good to go.

One challenge, however - is how to set up a local installation without leaving detritus on your machine. I’m a big fan of virtual environments with Python to prevent package dependency leaks - and I’ve been caught in the past when a simple installation has leaked across the machine, never to be fully removed. After a few years, the crud builds up… this time, I’ll go Docker instead.

I’ve installed Docker Desktop locally, and taken advantage of the new support for “Dev Environments” - simply pass in your GitHub repo and a Docker instance gets created, ready for Visual Code to access and edit. Visual Code is located on the host, but the rest is all contained in Docker - reducing the spillage.

To get this working, I opened up the CLI to the Docker instance and followed Jekyll Ubuntu instructions, namely:

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade …the instance was now ready for Ruby and Jekyll:
• sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev
• bash (initially was in sh)
• echo '# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems' >> ~/.bashrc
• echo 'export GEM_HOME="$HOME/gems"' >> ~/.bashrc
• echo 'export PATH="$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
• source ~/.bashrc Finally, install…
• gem install jekyll bundler
• bundle install

Now, because Ruby gets confused about language mappings (namely, errors such as Invalid US-ASCII character "\xE2" on line 54), declare:

• export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 This issue is probably caused from a Docker config somewhere, but for now, its stable & a simple fix.

That’s it; we can now serve the pages locally, which your web browser will be able to see (Docker automatically forwarded the ports):

• bundle exec jekyll serve