workstation VS entr

My workstation setup, both for Linux and MacOS, is in the following repository: https://github.com/sirikon/workstation

https://github.com/sirikon/workstation/blob/master/src/cli/c...

For Linux, it can install and configure everything I need when launched on a clean Debian installation. apt repositories, pins and packages; X11, i3, networking, terminal, symlinking configuration of many programs to Dropbox or the repository itself... The idea is to have my whole setup with a single command.

For Mac, it installs programs using brew and sets some configurations. Mac isn't my daily driver so the scripts aren't as complete.

Also there are scripts for the terminal to make my life easier. Random stuff like killing any gradle process in the background, upgrading programs that aren't packetized on APT, backing up savegames from my Anbernic, etc. https://github.com/sirikon/workstation/tree/master/src/shell

And more programs for common use, like screenshots, copying Stripe test cards into the clipboard, launching android emulators without opening Android Studio, etc. https://github.com/sirikon/workstation/tree/master/src/bin

entr ("Event Notify Test Runner"; GitHub), is a command-line tool written by Eric Radman that allows running arbitrary commands whenever files change.

I use something very similar on https://lunar.fyi and https://lowtechguys.com but I wouldn’t call this “simple” anymore.

They use Jinja templating, I prefer Slim (https://github.com/slim-template/slim#syntax-example) which has a more Pythonic syntax (there is plim [0] in Python for that)

I use Tailwind as well for terse styling and fast experimentation (allows me to write a darkMode-aware and responsive 100 line CSS in a single line with about 10 classes)

For interaction I can write CoffeeScript directly in the page [1] and have it compiled by plim.

I run a Caddy static server [2] and use Syncthing [3] to have every file save deployed instantly to my Hetzner server.

I use entr [4] and livereloadx [5] to rebuild the pages and do hot reload on file save. All the commands are managed in a simple Makefile [6]

———

You can already see how the footnotes take up a large chunk of this comment, this is not my idea of simple. Sure, the end result is readable static HTML and I never have to fight obscure React errors, but it’s a high effort setup for starters.

Simple for me would be: write markdown files for pages, a simple CSS for general styling (should be optional), click to deploy on my domain. Images should automatically be resized to multiple sizes and optimized, videos re-encoded for smaller filesize etc.

I have mostly implemented that for myself (https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...) but it feels fragile. I’d rather pay for a professional solution.

[0] https://plim.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[1] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/lowtechguys/blob/main/src/rcmd...

[2] https://caddyserver.com/docs/command-line#caddy-file-server

[3] https://syncthing.net

[4] https://github.com/eradman/entr

[5] https://nitoyon.github.io/livereloadx/

[6] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/lowtechguys/blob/main/Makefile

Try entr for fast reloading. Another one is hupper.

entr