Using Jekyll with Bundler
Bundler provides a consistent environment for Ruby projects by tracking and installing the exact gems and versions that are needed.
Bundler can be a great tool to use with Jekyll. Because it tracks dependencies on a per-project basis, it is particularly useful if you need to run different versions of Jekyll in different projects, or if you don’t want to install Jekyll at the system or user level. This tutorial will show you how to create a new Jekyll project using Bundler and without installing Jekyll outside the project.
Before You Begin
To complete this tutorial, you’ll need to have Ruby and Bundler installed. You can find the installation instructions on their websites.
Initialize Bundler
The first thing to do is create a new directory for your project and run
bundle init. This creates a new Bundler project (by creating an empty
Gemfile).
mkdir my-jekyll-website
cd my-jekyll-website
bundle init
Configure Bundler
This step is optional, but encouraged. We’re going to configure Bundler to install
gems in the ./vendor/bundle/ project subdirectory. This allows us to install
our dependencies in an isolated environment, ensuring they don’t conflict with
other gems on your system. If you skip this step, Bundler will install your
dependencies globally on your system.
bundle install --path vendor/bundle
Bundler Config is Persistent
This step is only required once per project. Bundler saves your config in
./.bundle/config, so future gems will be installed to the same
location.
Add Jekyll
Now, we’re going to use Bundler to add Jekyll as a dependency of our new
project. This command will add the Jekyll gem to our Gemfile and install it to
the ./vendor/bundle/ folder.
bundle add jekyll
Create A Jekyll Scaffold
Now that Jekyll is installed, we can use it to create the scaffolding for our
site. We need the --force parameter because our folder isn’t empty - it
already has some Bundler files in it. We run the bundle install separately
because Jekyll gets confused if the Gemfile already exists.
bundle exec jekyll new --force --skip-bundle .
bundle install
Serve the Site
Your new website is ready! You can serve the website with
bundle exec jekyll serve and visit it at
http://127.0.0.1:4000. From here, you’re ready to
continue developing the site on your own. All of the normal Jekyll commands are
available to you, but you should prefix them with bundle exec so that Bundler
runs the version of Jekyll that is installed in your project folder.
Commit to Source Control
If you’re storing your new site in version control, you’ll want to ignore the
./vendor/ and ./.bundle/ folders since they contain user- or
platform-specific information. New users will be able to install the correct
dependencies based on Gemfile and Gemfile.lock, which should both be checked
in. You can use this .gitignore to get started, if you want.
.gitignore
# Ignore metadata generated by Jekyll
_site/
.sass-cache/
.jekyll-cache/
.jekyll-metadata
# Ignore folders generated by Bundler
.bundle/
vendor/