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last_updated | type | stage | group | info |
---|---|---|---|---|
2020-01-06 | reference, howto | Release | Release Management | To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#designated-technical-writers |
Create a GitLab Pages website from scratch
This tutorial shows you how to create a Pages site from scratch. You will start with a blank project and create your own CI file, which gives instruction to the GitLab Runner. When your CI/CD pipeline runs, the Pages site is created.
This example uses the Jekyll Static Site Generator (SSG). Other SSGs follow similar steps. You do not need to be familiar with Jekyll or SSGs to complete this tutorial.
Prerequisites
To follow along with this example, start with a blank project in GitLab. Create three files in the root (top-level) directory.
-
.gitlab-ci.yml
A YAML file that contains the commands you want to run. For now, leave the file's contents blank. -
index.html
An HTML file you can populate with whatever HTML content you'd like, for example:<html> <head> <title>Home</title> </head> <body> <h1>Hello World!</h1> </body> </html>
-
Gemfile
A file that describes dependencies for Ruby programs. Populate it with this content:source "https://rubygems.org" gem "jekyll"
Choose a Docker image
In this example, the Runner uses a Docker image to run scripts and deploy the site.
This specific Ruby image is maintained on DockerHub.
Edit your .gitlab-ci.yml
and add this text as the first line.
image: ruby:2.7
If your SSG needs NodeJS to build, you must specify an
image that contains NodeJS as part of its file system. For example, for a
Hexo site, you can use image: node:12.17.0
.
Install Jekyll
To run Jekyll locally, you would open your terminal and:
- Install Bundler by running
gem install bundler
. - Create
Gemfile.lock
by runningbundle install
. - Install Jekyll by running
bundle exec jekyll build
.
In the .gitlab-ci.yml
file, this is written as:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build
In addition, in the .gitlab-ci.yml
file, each script
is organized by a job
.
A job
includes the scripts and settings you want to apply to that specific
task.
job:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build
For GitLab Pages, this job
has a specific name, called pages
.
This setting tells the Runner you want the job to deploy your website
with GitLab Pages:
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build
Specify the public
directory for output
Jekyll needs to know where to generate its output.
GitLab Pages only considers files in a directory called public
.
Jekyll uses destination (-d
) to specify an output directory for the built website:
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
Specify the public
directory for artifacts
Now that Jekyll has output the files to the public
directory,
the Runner needs to know where to get them. The artifacts are stored
in the public
directory:
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
Paste this into .gitlab-ci.yml
file, so it now looks like this:
image: ruby:2.7
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
Now save and commit the .gitlab-ci.yml
file. You can watch the pipeline run
by going to CI / CD > Pipelines.
When it succeeds, go to Settings > Pages to view the URL where your site is now available.
If you want to do more advanced tasks, you can update your .gitlab-ci.yml
file
with any of the available settings. You can check
your CI syntax with the GitLab CI/CD Lint Tool.
The following topics show other examples of other options you can add to your CI/CD file.
Deploy specific branches to a Pages site
You may want to deploy to a Pages site only from specific branches.
First, add a workflow
section to force the pipeline to run only when changes are
pushed to branches:
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
Then configure the pipeline to run the job for the master branch only.
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
pages:
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"'
Specify a stage to deploy
There are three default stages for GitLab CI/CD: build, test, and deploy.
If you want to test your script and check the built site before deploying
to production, you can run the test exactly as it will run when you
push to master
.
To specify a stage for your job to run in,
add a stage
line to your CI file:
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
pages:
stage: deploy
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"'
Now add another job to the CI file, telling it to
test every push to every branch except the master
branch:
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
pages:
stage: deploy
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"'
test:
stage: test
script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
- bundle exec jekyll build -d test
artifacts:
paths:
- test
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "master"'
When the test
job runs in the test
stage, Jekyll
builds the site in a directory called test
. The job affects
all branches except master
.
When you apply stages to different jobs, every job in the same stage builds in parallel. If your web application needs more than one test before being deployed, you can run all your tests at the same time.
Remove duplicate commands
To avoid duplicating the same scripts in every job, you can add them
to a before_script
section.
In the example, gem install bundler
and bundle install
were running
for both jobs, pages
and test
.
Move these commands to a before_script
section:
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
before_script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install
pages:
stage: deploy
script:
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"'
test:
stage: test
script:
- bundle exec jekyll build -d test
artifacts:
paths:
- test
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "master"'
Build faster with cached dependencies
To build faster, you can cache the installation files for your
project's dependencies by using the cache
parameter.
This example caches Jekyll dependencies in a vendor
directory
when you run bundle install
:
image: ruby:2.7
workflow:
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH'
cache:
paths:
- vendor/
before_script:
- gem install bundler
- bundle install --path vendor
pages:
stage: deploy
script:
- bundle exec jekyll build -d public
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"'
test:
stage: test
script:
- bundle exec jekyll build -d test
artifacts:
paths:
- test
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "master"'
In this case, you need to exclude the /vendor
directory from the list of folders Jekyll builds. Otherwise, Jekyll
will try to build the directory contents along with the site.
In the root directory, create a file called _config.yml
and add this content:
exclude:
- vendor
Now GitLab CI/CD not only builds the website,
but also pushes with continuous tests to feature-branches,
caches dependencies installed with Bundler, and
continuously deploys every push to the master
branch.
Related topics
For more information, see the following blog posts.
- Use GitLab CI/CD
environments
to deploy your web app to staging and production. - Learn how to run jobs sequentially, in parallel, or build a custom pipeline.
- Learn how to pull specific directories from different projects to deploy this website, https://docs.gitlab.com.
- Learn how to use GitLab Pages to produce a code coverage report.