Build GH Pages content to branch

[situx]

I am currently experimenting with building blocks in this repository:
https://github.com/opengeospatial/ontology-crs/

Here we have continuous integration scripts which push HTML content to the gh-pages branch:

• Spec generation
• Pylode HTML documentation
• Sample data rendered in HTML

The branch is then deployed to be used as a Github page.

I would like the building blocks postprocessing action to build the HTML Viewer result in the gh-pages branch in a specific subfolder, so that I can still host the other HTML deployments that we have created for this repository.

Is there any way to do this with current parameters or is this something that could be added?

[avillar]

There's some "flexibility" baked into the postprocessing workflow (validate-and-process.yml) that maybe you could leverage.

For example, you could customize the call to validate-and-process.yml in your own process-bblocks.yml with the following parameters:

• skip-pages: true (do not push GH pages)
• viewer_path: path/to/bblocks-viewer/ (this is the directory where the viewer's index.html will be written)
• before_pages: a shell script (string content) that pushes the changes (at least build/, /path/to/bblocks-viewer/index.html and /path/to/bblocks-viewer/config.js) to gh-pages.

You may have to add your main/master branch to the GH pages deployment branches inside your repo's environment settings.

I've built a PoC in this repo.

CC @rob-metalinkage (you might find this interesting)

ETA: of course, this is just one of many possible approaches.

[situx]

Thanks @avillar that looks useful.
I will try it.
However, a parameter like "pages-branch" that implements this workflow would simplify this.
I think it could be a common use case.

[situx]

Ok, so the deployment worked, thx a lot.
However, the assets path seems to be not working, since images that were visible previously are not showing:
Example here: https://opengeospatial.github.io/ontology-crs/bblocks/bblock/ogc.geosrs.cs
The path still points to the _sources folder in the repository which is not deployed.
Did I miss anything?

[avillar]

Ah, no, you're right, _sources should be included here too, so that it gets pushed to gh-pages.
In any case, your point about potentially supporting it OOTB is taken.

[situx]

Yes that works in the sense that they are deployed to the gh-pages branch. However, they do not get deployed to the webspace. My suspicion is that because the folder starts with _ it might be treated as "not to be deployed" by GH-pages Jekyll implementation. I think the "deploy" task executes a jekyll build?

[avillar]

Yes, that's right on the money. As a workaround, an empty .nojekyll file can be added to the gh-pages branch (this works now).

I've also added 404.html to the list of bblocks files, since otherwise URLs like https://avillar.github.io/bblocks-sample-gh-pages/my-bblocks-viewer/bblock/ogc.bbr.template.myFeature won't work.