Lifer

Lifer is an extensible static site generator. Out of the box, it provides a classic static site generation experience, complete with RSS feed and ERB templating. Unlike other Ruby-based static site generators, Lifer encourages you to bring your own asset pipeline and configure it as a pre-build step.

Lifer is currently in pre-release. Features are incomplete. Your mileage may vary.

Here's a short overview of Lifer's flagship features.

Whether you want to compile assets with Ruby-based tools, JavaScript-based tools, or other tools, Lifer is okay with that. As long as those tools come with a commandline interface, Lifer can shell out to those tools as a prebuild step.

If you have multiple collections of entries that must be output in different ways, Lifer can help you do this. While every entry can only belong to a single collection, you can create your own "selections" filter to group entries across collections.

Lifer autoloads any Ruby files included in the root of your project automatically. This lets you specify your own custom output builders, feed formats, and meta-collections of entries.

Need to preview your static site before your build it on your production server? No problem. Just use the Lifer commandline interface to start a development server at http://localhost:9292:

$ lifer serve

This installation guide assumes you already have Ruby 3 installed on your system.

I recommend installing Lifer via Bundler. In the root directory of your static site source, add a Gemfile if one doesn't exist already:

$ bundle init

In the Gemfile, add the lifer gem:

gem "lifer", "<= 1"

And then execute:

$ bundle install

This development guide assumes you already have Ruby 3 installed on your system.

Clone this repository, install dependencies via Bundler, and ensure the test suite can run on your machine:

$ git clone https://github.com/benjaminwil/lifer lifer
$ cd lifer
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rspec

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