GitHubPagesForGAP

This repository can be used to quickly set up a website hosted by GitHub for GAP packages using a GitHub repository. Specifically, this uses GitHub pages by adding a gh-pages branch to your package repository which contains data generated from the PackageInfo.g file of your package.

Initial setup

The easiest way to do this is to run the setup-gh-pages shell script provided in the GitHubPagesForGAP from within a git clone of your package’s GitHub repository.

In case this does not work, or if you want to really know what’s going on, you can also follow the manual instructions described after the fold.

The following instructions assume you do not already have a gh-pages branch in your repository. If you do have one, you should delete it before following these instructions.

Go into your clone of your package repository.

Setup a gh-pages branch in a gh-pages subdirectory.

Users with a recent enough git version (recommended is >= 2.7.0) can do this using a “worktree”, via the following commands:

# Add a new remote pointing to the GitHubPagesForGAP repository
git remote add -f gh-gap https://github.com/gap-system/GitHubPagesForGAP

# Create a fresh gh-pages branch from the new remote
git branch gh-pages gh-gap/gh-pages --no-track

# Create a new worktree and change into it
git worktree add gh-pages gh-pages
cd gh-pages

Everybody else should instead do the following, with the URL in the initial clone command suitably adjusted:

# Create a fresh clone of your repository, and change into it
git clone https://github.com/USERNAME/REPOSITORY gh-pages
cd gh-pages

# Add a new remote pointing to the GitHubPagesForGAP repository
git remote add gh-gap https://github.com/gap-system/GitHubPagesForGAP
git fetch gh-gap

# Create a fresh gh-pages branch from the new remote
git checkout -b gh-pages gh-gap/gh-pages --no-track

Add in copies of your PackageInfo.g, README (or README.md) and manual:

cp -f ../PackageInfo.g ../README* .
cp -f ../doc/*.{css,html,js,txt} doc/

Now run the update.g GAP script. This extracts data from your PackageInfo.g file and puts that data into _data/package.yml. From this, the website template can populate the web pages with some sensible default values.
```
gap update.g
```

Commit and push everything.

git add PackageInfo.g README* doc/ _data/package.yml
git commit -m "Setup gh-pages based on GitHubPagesForGAP"
git push --set-upstream origin gh-pages

That’s it. You can now see your new package website under https://USERNAME.github.io/REPOSITORY/ (of course after adjusting USERNAME and REPOSITORY suitably).

Using an existing gh-pages branch

If you previously set up GitHubPagesForGAP and thus already have a gh-pages branch, you may on occasion have need to make a fresh clone of your package repository, and then also would like to recreate the gh-pages directory.

The easiest way to do this is to run the setup-gh-pages shell script provided in the GitHubPagesForGAP from within a git clone of your package’s GitHub repository.

In case this does not work, or if you want to really know what’s going on, you can also follow the manual instructions described after the fold.

Users with a recent enough git version (recommended is >= 2.7) can do this using a “worktree”, via the following commands:

   git branch gh-pages origin/gh-pages
   git worktree add gh-pages gh-pages

If you are using an older version of git, you can instead use a second clone of your repository instead:

   git clone -b gh-pages https://github.com/USERNAME/REPOSITORY gh-pages

Adjusting the content and layout

GitHubPagesForGAP tries to automatically provide good defaults for most packages. However, you can tweak everything about it:

To adjust the page layout, edit the files stylesheets/styles.css and _layouts/default.html.
To adjust the content of the front page, edit index.md (resp. for the content of the sidebar, edit _layouts/default.html
You can also add additional pages, in various formats (HTML, Markdown, Textile, …).

For details, please consult the Jekyll manual.

Testing the site locally

If you would like to test your site on your own machine, without uploading it to GitHub (where it is visible to the public), you can do so by installing Jekyll, the static web site generator used by GitHub to power GitHub Pages.

Once you have installed Jekyll as described on its homepage, you can test the website locally as follows:

Go to the gh-pages directory we created above.
Run jekyll (this launches a tiny web server on your machine):
```
jekyll serve -w
```
Visit the URL http://localhost:4000 in a web browser.

Updating after you made a release

Whenever you make a release of your package (and perhaps more often than that), you will want to update your website. The easiest way is to use the release script from the ReleaseTools, which performs all the necessary steps for you, except for the very last of actually publishing the package (and it can do even that for you, if you pass the -p option to it).

However, you can also do it manually. The steps for doing it are quite similar to the above:

Go to the gh-pages directory we created above.

Add in copies of your PackageInfo.g, README (or README.md) and manual:

cp -f ../PackageInfo.g ../README* .
cp -f ../doc/*.{css,html,js,txt} doc/

Now run the update.g GAP script.

Commit and push the work we have just done.

git add PackageInfo.g README* doc/ _data/package.yml
git commit -m "Update web pages"
git push

A few seconds after you have done this, your changes will be online under https://USERNAME.github.io/REPOSITORY/ .

Updating to a newer version of GitHubPagesForGAP

Normally you should not have to ever do this. However, if you really want to, you can attempt to update to the most recent version of GitHubPagesForGAP via the following instructions. The difficulty of such an update depends on how much you tweaked the site after initially cloning GitHubPagesForGAP.

Go to the gh-pages directory we created above. Make sure that there are no uncommitted changes, as they will be lost when following these instructions.

Make sure the gh-gap remote exists and has the correct URL. If in doubt, just re-add it:

git remote remove gh-gap
git remote add gh-gap https://github.com/gap-system/GitHubPagesForGAP

Attempt to merge the latest GitHubPagesForGAP.
```
git pull gh-gap gh-pages
```
If this produced no errors and just worked, skip to the next step. But it is quite likely that you will have conflicts in the file _data/package.yml, or in your README or PackageInfo.g files. These can usually be resolved by entering this:
```
cp ../PackageInfo.g ../README* .
gap update.g
git add PackageInfo.g README* _data/package.yml
```
If you are lucky, these were the only conflicts (check with git status). If no merge conflicts remain, finish with this command:
```
git commit -m "Merge gh-gap/gh-pages"
```
If you still have merge conflicts, and don’t know how to resolve them, or get stuck some other way, you can abort the merge process and revert to the original state by issuing this command:
```
git merge --abort
```
You should be done now. Don’t forget to push your changes if you want them to become public.

Packages using GitHubPagesForGAP

The majority of packages listed on https://gap-packages.github.io use GitHubPagesForGAP. If you want some specific examples, here are some:

Contact

Please submit bug reports, suggestions for improvements and patches via the issue tracker.

You can also contact me directly via email.