zs

zs

zs is an extremely minimal static site generator written in Go.

It's inspired by zas generator, but is even more minimal.

The name stands for 'zen static' as well as it's my initials.

Features

• Zero configuration (no configuration file needed)
• Cross-platform
• Highly extensible
• Easy to learn
• Fast

Installation

Download the binaries from Github or build it manually:

$ go get github.com/zserge/zs

Ideology

Keep your texts in markdown format in the root directory of your blog/site.

Keep all service files (extensions, layout pages, deployment scripts etc) in the .zs subdirectory.

Define variables in the header of the markdown files:

title: My web site
keywords: best website, hello, world

Markdown text goes after a *newline*

Use placeholders for variables and plugins in your markdown or html files, e.g. {{ title }}.

Write extensions in any language you like and put them into the .zs subdiretory.

Everything the extensions prints to stdout becomes the value of the placeholder.

Extensions can use special environment variables, like:

• $ZS - a path to the zs executable
• $ZS_OUTDIR - a path to the directory with generated files
• $ZS_FILE - a path to the currently processed markdown file
• $ZS_URL - a URL for the currently generated page

You can also pass command line arguments, e.g: {{ my-plugin arg1 arg2 }}

Example of RSS generation

Hooks

There are two special plugin names that are executed every time the build happens - pre and post. You can define some global action here like compile your LESS to CSS etc:

# .zs/post

#!/bin/sh
lessc < $ZS_OUTDIR/styles.less > $ZS_OUTDIR/styles.css
rm -f $ZS_OUTDIR/styles.css

Command line usage

zs build re-builds your site.

zs watch rebuilds your site every time you modify any file.

zs var <filename> [var1 var2...] prints a list of variables defined in the header of a given markdown file, or the values of certain variables (even if it's an empty string).

License

The software is distributed under the MIT license.