Set Up Jekyll

Updated: 2 minutes to read

First, install Jekyll on your system. You may follow the installation guide on Jekyll’s documentation site.

A note on installation if you are using Fedora: even if you follow the steps in the guide correctly, you might still get this error when running gem install jekyll bundler:

current directory: /usr/local/share/gems/gems/http_parser.rb-0.6.0/ext/ruby_http_parser
make "DESTDIR="
gcc -I. -I/usr/include -I/usr/include/ruby/backward -I/usr/include -I.   -fPIC -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Werror=format-security -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wp,-D_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS -fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong -grecord-gcc-switches -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1 -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-annobin-cc1 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -fstack-clash-protection -fcf-protection -fPIC -I/usr/local/share/gems/gems/http_parser.rb-0.6.0/ext/ruby_http_parser -m64 -o ruby_http_parser.o -c ruby_http_parser.c
gcc: fatal error: cannot read spec file ‘/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1’: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Makefile:245: ruby_http_parser.o] Error 1

In this case, just run dnf install /usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1 as root user, install the packages, and you should be able to continue Jekyll installation. In addition, when installing dependencies, you can replace @development-tools with gcc gcc-c++ make to reduce the number of packages being installed.

Once you’ve installed Jekyll, you are ready to initialize your site. There are two initialization options:

  1. Run jekyll new PATH, where PATH is where you want to store your site’s source files. This creates a site with pre-applied Minima theme (the theme this site uses as of this collection is composed, in a modified variant), and is a more complete starting point for your own site.

  2. Run jekyll new PATH --blank; then, go to PATH, run bundle init, and add the following to Gemfile:

    gem "jekyll"

    This just creates a minimal site, which is better for in-depth customization.

It’s your call, and we will try to cover both methods in this collection.