I had to recreate my development environment again, so I decided to document the initial setup steps this time for future reference. The starting point is the official Jekyll documentation: Jekyll Docs, but it assumes that Ruby and the gem package manager are already installed. Instead of installing packages directly on my machine, I opted to use a Docker container as the development environment.

Using Docker for Jekyll Development

To use a Docker image while leveraging the repository’s code, run the following command:

sudo docker run -it --name ruby-gem --privileged -v /home/centos/blog:/home/blog -p 4000:4000 ruby bash

Explanation:

  • -i (--interactive): Keeps the standard input (STDIN) open, allowing you to interact with the container.
  • -t (--tty): Allocates a pseudo-TTY, making the terminal experience more user-friendly (e.g., enabling features like line editing).
  • --name ruby-gem: Names the container ruby-gem for easy reference.
  • --privileged: Grants elevated permissions to the container (may not always be necessary).
  • -v /home/centos/blog:/home/blog: Mounts the local directory /home/centos/blog into /home/blog inside the container.
  • ruby bash: Uses the official Ruby image and starts a Bash shell.

Together, -it allows you to interact with the container in an interactive shell session.

Inside the Container

Once inside the container, navigate to the mounted directory:

cd /home/blog

Note: Any changes made in this directory will reflect on the host machine, making it easy to edit files locally while running Jekyll inside the container.

Next Steps

  1. Install Jekyll and Bundler inside the container:
 gem install bundler jekyll
  1. Verify the installation:
 ruby -v
 gem -v
 bundler -v
 jekyll -v

bundler install

bundle exec jekyll serve --host 0.0.0.0

Conclusion

By using a Docker-based environment, Jekyll can be developed and tested without installing dependencies directly on the host machine. This approach ensures a clean and reproducible setup.

Note: Post finalized using LLMs (chatgpt)