On Nov 15, 5:05 am, Mark Carter <alt.mcar...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've just created a GitHub Pages for my repo. It's a nice idea, but I > don't like the way I have to create a separate branch for my web > pages. In effect, github makes us squash two repos in one - one for > the code, and another the html. > > This is a bad idea. Conceptually, the gh-pages branch isn't "really" a > branch off an existing one, but a completely distinct branch. I argue > that that's not the way git is supposed to work. > > It creates a complication: there's no way for the branches to "talk" > to each other. It means that I can't generate html from my main branch > (maybe I want to run a doc generator on my python code, maybe I have > markdown text from which I want to generate both man pages, info and > html). > > A better approach would be for the user to have to create a > configuration file, maybe called gh-pages, in the root of the repo. > The most important thing it will do is point to a directory in my repo > that contains my pages. That way, I don't have to keep switching > branches - one for code, one for html. Github looks at my repo, > determines that there is a gh-pages file, reads it, and serves pages > accordingly.
I agree and have asked, begged and pleaded for a directory-based solution for a very long time. The gh-pages branch is a terrible design and the fact that the git people do it strikes me as nothing more as a way for them to show git off --not something practical to be emulated. A directory based design is simple, straight-forward, obvious and requires no special scripting at all. Unfortunately the continual response to adding a directory-based solution has been "maybe... one day". I fear it's just a nice way to say "no". But what to do now? Basically I emulate the directory-based solution using the grancher gem. It works very well and is very easy to script. (Quite honestly, if it wasn't for grancher I would not be using github's website features at all, and I may not have even bothered switching to github b/c of it). Unfortunately, grancher does not work on Ruby 1.9+ yet and the author seems to have forgotten about it :-( -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GitHub" group. To post to this group, send email to git...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to github+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/github?hl=en.
