Containerizing This Site

Making this site’s development portable

This site uses Github Pages for free hosting. Under the hood, it runs Jekyll to generate the pages and uses the theme ‘Minimual Mistakes’. To preview the site, I needed to install the correct version of ruby, install the theme’s needed Gems, and configure the server’s to use the local configurations. This was a clear usecase for containerization.

I originally had this setup working on my older Macbook Pro, but after an update the needed dependencies broke. Since that laptop was much older, I never opted to fix the configuration and have since moved to a new mac system for current development work. Instead of installing and managing ruby versions, containerazation seemed the best fit. Instead of using Docker, I choise to use macOS’s build in container tool. I built the initial DockerFile and had some success, but updates to site pages did not update/rebuild automatically. Working alongside ChatGPT, adding the --force_polling ensured the site’s volume was kept up-to-date and I was able to quickly write new pages.