Lately I have been really getting into the workflow of containerizing dependencies, and using those containers to get work done. It’s also been a while since I regularly wrote a blog post, so I was pleasantly surprised today to find that Jekyll has been containerized. The workflow where I simply start a container to compile my Jekyll site is vastly superior to what I use to do, which involved installing Ruby, and a bunch of bundles on my system.

Honestly, I don’t really know Ruby, and although I do like learning new languages, Ruby and its packaging/dependency system isn’t very high up on my list right now. I would much rather start up an application, and have it run in the background, compiling my static site for my blogging pleasure. That’s where Docker comes in.

We’ll start by getting the latest Jekyll container:

docker pull jekyll/jekyll

If you’re using Native Docker, you can then start the container from the directory where your Jekyll site repository is, using the command:

docker run --rm --label=jekyll --volume=$(pwd):/srv/jekyll \
  -it -p 127.0.0.1:4000:4000 jekyll/jekyll jekyll serve

and now you should be able to visit your compiled site at 0.0.0.0:4000 from your browser of choice.

However, that docker run command is a bit difficult to remember, so here’s a docker-compose.yml file that does the same thing:

version: '3'
services:
    local-jekyll:
        container_name: local-jekyll
        image:
            jekyll/jekyll
        ports:
            - "4000:4000"
        volumes:
            - .:/srv/jekyll
        command: jekyll serve

check that file into your site repository directory and from there run:

docker-compose up

and you’re ready to blog!