codeclub_lesson_builder

This project builds codeclub exercises from markdown to styled webpages. A file watcher builds upon changes and refreshes the browser. Watching is done through gulp and build are done with metalsmith.

Here is a screenshot with exmaple of workflow:

Development

You will need node and git for using this software.

codeclub_lesson_builder should be cloned into a lesson project where markdown lessons are in a src folder. This simplifies setup for contributors, as codeclub_lesson_builder can be included as a git submodule and cloned recursively. Cloning lesson repo for contributors (instead of this repo with lessons as submodule) will make pull request to the lesson repo a bit less complex. The steps below assumes this setup, and are only needed upon first time inclusion in the lesson repo. Steps for setting up lesson repo with local building should be similar to this. Look at this repo for an example of setup and http://kodeklubben.github.io for the live Norwegian lesson pages made with this build tool.

Clone repository

git clone https://github.com/arve0/codeclub_lesson_builder

Installing requirements

cd codeclub_lesson_builder
npm install
cp utils/gulp utils/gulp.bat ..
cd ..

*Run server nix

./gulp

Run server windows

gulp.bat

Note Ubuntu users!

nodejs is not installed as node, and this causes problems for some packages. To fix this, link node to nodejs like so BEFORE installing packages through npm:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node

Note - Maximum number of open files

Gulp and metalsmith read files in parallel, which might cause trouble for some users. If number of open files exceeds operating system limits, one will get an EMFILE error code. Description for increasing number of allowed open files:

• Linux
• Mac
• Windows: Not affected. Report if you're experiencing any trouble.

Trouble


Having problems? Come and chat with us on gitter.

Specification

You could read about the format in FORMAT.md.

Features

• Convert markdown to styled HTML
• Convert markdown to styled PDF (fast! 100 PDFs in ~30 seconds)
• Link-checker
• Automatic build with github webhooks
• Zip-archive of collections/courses
• Styled scratch code blocks
• Adjust the templates to your own liking
• Watch files and re-render lesson upon changes (live-reload in browser)
• Create playlists and hide lessons from index
• Use material from other webpages with external-tag
• Add notes to footer with footer-tag
• Lesson tags
• Sortable index with search
• Support for several languages

gulp tasks

You can run tasks with ./gulp taskname when in the lesson repo, or with gulp taskname in codeclub_lesson_builder-folder if you have installed gulp globally.

list of gulp tasks

• archive will create zip files of collections
• assets copies assets to build/assets
• build builds all markdown files (except README.md) to html and copy files which are in lesson-folders
• clean delete all files in build
• css will process less files, add asset-css, autoprefix, minify and concat to style.min.css
• js uglify, add already uglified asset-js and concat to script.min.js
• pdf will create PDFs of all htmls in build folder
• server will start a local web-server and open your browser with the index
• default start the server-task and reload browser upon file changes (runs when gulp recieves no arguments)
• dist does a clean then a complete build
• links runs a local server and check all links on all pages
• prodlinks check links on production page, set productionCrawlStart in config.js
• github start webhook server which listens for pushes to repo and starts build