Setup: Boilerplate

Files that you just copy directly

Welcome!

If you are new to this format, please start with the “welcome” section of the page Setup: New Course before reading this page.

Boilerplate files

There are several files that every repo in this format needs (including both course level and offering level repos). These files typically:

do NOT need to be modified by the instructor or customized for each course
but they DO need to be updated periodically as new versions of GitHub pages, and the various components on which GitHub pages depends (Ruby, Jekyll, etc) are updated, typically to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities.

So periodically, you may need to run the script that updates these files.

How to setup (or update) the boilerplate files

Typically, the only modification needed is to copy a brand new set of these files from here:

https://github.com/ucsb-cs-course-repos/boilerplate

There is a script in that repo that does exactly that called ./update.sh. Just do the following, where target-directory is the directory you are updating, e.g. ~/github/ucsb-cs24/ucsb-cs24.github.io

git clone https://github.com/ucsb-cs-course-repos/boilerplate
cd boilerplate
./update.sh target-directory-here

Overview of the boilerplate files

Here’s a rundown of these boilerplate files. Click the file name to see it’s source code.

Filename	Purpose
`Gemfile`	This is needed for any Ruby application; it specifies the version of Ruby you are using, and what Ruby gems your application depends on.
`.gitignore`	This helps keep your repo tidy by telling github which files to ignore when committing to github
`setup.sh`	This is a shell script that does the `bundle install` step for setting up Ruby to run locally for testing purposes
`jekyll.sh`	This is a shell script that does the `bundle exec jekyll serve` step; if you run `setup.sh` once, then you can run this script to test updates to your website locally before pushing to Github.
`.travis.yml`	Allows you to set up automated testing via https://travis-ci.org; this runs tests and help you find and debug configuration errors in your site as it’s pushed to Github Pages.

`./update.sh` example:

Phillips-Mac-mini:boilerplate pconrad$ ./update.sh ~/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/
.gitignore -> /Users/pconrad/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/.gitignore
.travis.yml -> /Users/pconrad/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/.travis.yml
Gemfile -> /Users/pconrad/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/Gemfile
jekyll.sh -> /Users/pconrad/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/jekyll.sh
setup.sh -> /Users/pconrad/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/setup.sh
Phillips-Mac-mini:boilerplate pconrad$ cd ~/github/ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io/
Phillips-Mac-mini:ucsb-cs64.github.io pconrad$ git status
On branch master

No commits yet

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

	.gitignore
	.travis.yml
	Gemfile
	jekyll.sh
	setup.sh

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
Phillips-Mac-mini:ucsb-cs64.github.io pconrad$ git add .
Phillips-Mac-mini:ucsb-cs64.github.io pconrad$ git commit -m "add boilerplate"
[master (root-commit) 23fcca9] add boilerplate
 5 files changed, 54 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 .gitignore
 create mode 100644 .travis.yml
 create mode 100644 Gemfile
 create mode 100755 jekyll.sh
 create mode 100755 setup.sh
Phillips-Mac-mini:ucsb-cs64.github.io pconrad$ git push origin master
Counting objects: 7, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (7/7), done.
Writing objects: 100% (7/7), 1.00 KiB | 1.00 MiB/s, done.
Total 7 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To github.com:ucsb-cs64/ucsb-cs64.github.io.git
 * [new branch]      master -> master
Phillips-Mac-mini:ucsb-cs64.github.io pconrad$ 