Switch host to Codeberg

This site has now switched to Codeberg hosting. Codeberg is an up-and-coming community run alternative to the popular Github service. Being a FOSS enthusiast myself, it was an natural move for me. Going forward I intend to host all my new projects in Codeberg. I have linked to my Codeberg profile in the site homepage now instead.

Codeberg is built on the open-source Forgejo base software. Naturally I tried my hand at selfhosting it, complete with a runner (CI workflow host helper). Unfortunately the online version doesn’t offer a CI runner for free.

As a result of this, we can’t have automated hosted (on push) builds of the SSG site generation. We have to build it locally (or supply a CI runner in the form of a VM). But I see this as a good thing. This will force you to test the generated site for errors locally.

We could have also pushed to a temporary host branch/repo to see if it’s successful before merging into the actual site repo (but this is beyond my understanding). So far I have been just making the necessary changes to source files and then blindly push to Github, where the runner builds (fingers crossed). Fortunately zola version provided by Github images was not updated over time (which have come through breaking changes!).

To make this local build process seamless, I use a Makefile in the project root:

.PHONY: pages clean publish
SHELL := /bin/bash
LAST_COMMIT_MESSAGE := $(shell git log -n 1 --pretty=format:'%s')
PAGES_REPO_URL := git@codeberg.org:ntn888/pages.git
PAGES_DIR := ../pages

pages: clean
    flatpak run org.getzola.zola build

clean:
    rm -rf public/

publish: pages
    # Clone the repo if it doesn't exist
    if [ ! -d "$(PAGES_DIR)" ]; then \
        git clone --depth=1 $(PAGES_REPO_URL) $(PAGES_DIR); \
    fi

    # Remove all files except .git (ensuring .git and its content remain intact)
    find $(PAGES_DIR) -mindepth 1 -not -path "$(PAGES_DIR)/.git/*" -not -name ".git" -exec rm -rf {} +

    # Copy all built files to the cleaned pages directory
    cp -r public/. $(PAGES_DIR)/

    # Push new changes to the remote repository
    pushd $(PAGES_DIR) && \
        git add . && \
        git commit -m "Update site: $(LAST_COMMIT_MESSAGE)" && \
        git push origin main && \
    popd

As seen, this creates (if not already present) pages directory adjacent to the current SSG source project directory. And pushes this to the pages repo to Codeberg (which is the specified repo for hosting pages).

Now, run make pages to generate followed by make publish.

In other news, I have reclaimed my simplycreate.online domain for this site. This will help sustain the site in-case of problems with a specific host, in this case Codeberg.