Readme

A tiny yst clone using the dhall configuration language (BEWARE, WIP).

Inspiration

• GitHub - jgm/yst: create static websites from YAML data and string templates
• GitHub - ChrisPenner/slick: Static site generator built on Shake
• GitHub - srid/rib: Haskell static site generator based on Shake

Goals

Lentil is a static site builder, directly inspired by yst, which combines the pandoc document converter, for converting markup to html, the dhall configuration language, for site configuration and templating, and the shake build tool for a blazingly-fast auto-caching build process.

Usage

Site configuration

The global site configuration is defined in config.dhall, which is assumed to reside at the root of the data directory. It is of type Config, and contains the following values:

  { title = "Patrick D. Elliott"
  , siteDir = "site"
  , dataDir = "data"
  , contentDir = "content"
  , cssDir = "css"
  , staticDirs = [] : List Text
  , templateDir = "templates"
  , defaultLayout = "default.dhall"
  , author = "Patrick D. Elliott"
  }
: ./types/Config.dhall

title

the site title.

siteDir

the directory to which the built site is deployed.

dataDir

where the site data resides.

contentDir

where the dhall files specifying the pages to be built reside. The structure of the deployed site mirrors the directory structure of the content directory. Each dhall file in the content directory is assumed to be of type Meta, and corresponds to a single page.

cssDir

where the css files reside.

staticDirs

directories containing any static files.

templateDir

directory containing templates (dhall functions).

defaultLayout

the default template used to build pages from Meta values.

author

the site author.

Building pages from dhall files

The content directory is assumed to contain dhall files of type Meta, specifying how to build individual pages. An example is given below:

let Content = < Markdown : Text | Org : Text | Plain : Text >

in    { metaTitle = Content.Markdown "Home"
      , metaContent = Content.Markdown ./index.md as Text
      , metaStyle = "gruvbox.css"
      , metaDate = None Text
      }
    : ../types/Meta.dhall

A full specification of a page consists of:

metaTitle

the page title.

metaStyle

the name of the style file to be included in the header.

The remaining fields take advantage of some of the more interesting aspects of dhall’s type system, so we’ll dwell on them here.

metaDate is of type Optional Text. This means that the user can either manually specify the date, by replacing the value of the field with, e.g., Some "2020-06-23", or leave it empty, as above. If left empty, lentil will automatically set the date to the current date. Optional in dhall is therefore similar to Maybe in haskell.

metaContent is of type Content – a union type. This wraps a text value in a constructor indicating the type of markup used. If Org or Markdown, lentil will automatically parse the content and render it as html via pandoc. If Plain, the content is assumed to be html and will be left unchanged.

• css/js minification?
• Currently using MathML to diplay math, which is only really supported in firefox.
• Automatically construct tree structure from paths for navigation