Ivy looks great. That said, every time I see a new SSG in Python, I get all excited about it for a minute. Then I remember this bit of advice: "Just use Jekyll".<p>> Jekyll is not better than the rest for any fundamental design reason; it’s better because it’s enormously popular and therefore excels in the long tail of details.<p>> ...<p>> If, like me, you secretly believe that everything is better if it’s written in Python, I still suggest you start with Jekyll (which is done in Ruby). In my experience, using Jekyll does not require writing or reading a single line of Ruby.<p><a href="http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/jekyll.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/jekyll.html</a><p>This matches my own experience pretty well.
For a <i>minimalist</i> static site generator, I think it's hard to beat just writing your own that does exactly what you want and nothing else. In a hundred lines or less of Python, you can have your minimal generator, know exactly how it works and how to extend it, and be able to refresh your memory on conventions/configuration with thirty seconds of scrolling through the source.
<p><pre><code> mysite/
site.py # site configuration file
ext/ # extensions directory for plugins
inc/ # includes directory for menus, etc.
lib/ # library directory for themes
out/ # output directory for html files
res/ # resources directory for static assets
src/ # source directory for text files
</code></pre>
Isn't this way too messy?<p>What are the advantages of this over the other 1000000 static site generators?
This is public domain, which is very generous, but apparently problematic. E.g. see comments here <a href="https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-week/dr-richard-hipp-geek-of-the-week/" rel="nofollow">https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-wee...</a>:<p>"If I had known as much about copyright in 2001 as I know now, I probably would have gone with something like the Apache license. Live and learn…"
No disrespect, but, seriously, given that project was created 9 months ago, "minimalistic static site generator" isn't really sufficient project description, let alone marketing slogan. What I want to know is why to use it over<p>* Jekyll<p>* Hakyll<p>* Hugo<p>* Pelican<p>* Sculpin<p>* ...
Try Hugo if you do not care about the language it's written in. It has a pretty vibrant community. <a href="https://gohugo.io/" rel="nofollow">https://gohugo.io/</a>
<a href="http://mulholland.xyz/docs/ivy/themes.html" rel="nofollow">http://mulholland.xyz/docs/ivy/themes.html</a> is gorgeous on FF/Android.<p>I might replace my static blog script with this :)
I don't mean to detract from Ivy, but...<p>As an interesting aside, the fact that you can organise your pages in a hierarchy reminds me of cat-v's "werc" website framework[0]. It's not a static site generator, but it will read the directory and file tree into a navigation menu, so you can navigate the tree using a sidebar. It will render pages using markdown on the fly.<p>Perhaps the "killer feature" is that you can run multiple subdomains using one instance. If you configure your web server correctly, a request to x.y.com will serve the website stored in the x.y.com directory etc.<p>It's also very small and extensible.<p>[0] <a href="http://werc.cat-v.org" rel="nofollow">http://werc.cat-v.org</a>
Looks like a cool project. What made you choose to build this vs use an existing one like Pelican, Nikola, or Lektor?<p>Have you thought about integrating a bundler like Webpack or something similar, and also support for Sass?
I've used Pelican before and I'm currently using Jekyll, but this looks interesting enough to try on a small blog/project, and I like what I see. I wish it were more blog-oriented, or have a blog plugin, so it makes creating/managing blogs easier.
Cool!<p>Would appreciate a motivation section in the readme, specifically whether this addresses needs better than others (especially Lektor which seems aimed at the same use case).<p>Or not, it's your project, can just be because you wanna :)
I really think the only thing differentiating these static site generators from each other is how pretty the demo site's CSS is. :/<p>Ivy looks great, though.
Consider creating a page to put on on website that compares and contrasts Ivy compared to other static site generators. Link to via Readme<p>A similar conceptual example: <a href="https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html" rel="nofollow">https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html</a><p>Mention whether your SSG supports reStructuredtext, markdown, etc.
The way --watch is implemented is pretty, mmm, crude.<p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/597962/223424" rel="nofollow">https://stackoverflow.com/a/597962/223424</a> lists saner alternatives for the major platforms.
What I think would be awesome is a html "rename" tool, which is to rewrite all the relative urls and filenames in HTML/css files when changing their location. Does anyone know?