What is test-pages?

This is a testing environment for Github Pages that allows the user to author articles before pushing to github. Your Github Pages repo will be cloned to test-pages/repo allowing you to edit files then view them at http://localhost:8000. When you're happy with an article, just commit and push it as you normally would.

How to use test-pages in Vagrant

Prerequisites

• Vagrant
• Ansible
• A Github Pages repository

Usage

Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/modulusx/test-pages.git

Create an environment variable GHP_REPO containing the linke to your repository (in my case):

export GHP_REPO=https://github.com/modulusx/modulusx.github.io.git

Start the VM and let it provision, this might take a while:

cd test-pages
vagrant up

The last step in the Ansible playbook will clone your repo, if you've forgotten to set the GHP_REPO environment variable prior to running vagrant up, don't fret, you can simply vagrant halt the VM, set GHP_REPO, and run vagrant provision after setting the variable. After it finishes, you should see output similar to:

==> default: Configuration file: /tmp/ghp/src/_config.yml
==> default:             Source: /tmp/ghp/src/
==> default:        Destination: /tmp/ghp/dest/
==> default:  Incremental build: disabled. Enable with --incremental
==> default:       Generating... 
==> default:                     done in 0.265 seconds.
==> default:  Auto-regeneration: enabled for '/tmp/ghp/src/'
==> default: Configuration file: /tmp/ghp/src/_config.yml
==> default:     Server address: http://0.0.0.0:8000/
==> default:   Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.

At this point, you should be able to browse to http://localhost:8000 to view your site as it currently exists.

Your github pages repository will be cloned to test-pages/repo where you can author your articles from the host system. After jekyll is runnng, you will see updated output each time it regenerates the site as a result of you saving a new file:

==> default:       Regenerating: 1 file(s) changed at 2016-02-09 18:17:40 
==> default: ...done in 0.165030546 seconds.

When you're all done, just hit Ctrl-C twice to kill the connection to Jekyll, then vagrant halt to stop the VM. The repo will remain on your system and you can start authoring again with vagrant up.

Vagrant tips

Vagrant is pretty easy to work with, here are some common commands. To verify that a VM is running:

vagrant status

To ssh into the VM:

vagrant ssh

To reprovision the VM:

vagrant provision

To halt the VM:

vagrant halt

To destroy the VM:

vagrant destroy