The website for https://crystal-china.org

Development dependencies

• Crystal
• pg
• bun
• podman (or docker)

Development

1. First, install Crystal. You can check out the instructions here: https://crystal-lang.org/install/

2. Run crystal run script/setup.cr, Just make sure you’ve got pg and bun installed before running this.

3. Finally, run lucky dev, and you're all set!

Deployment

The application is deployed as a static binary with its frontend assets baked in. Markdown documents deliberately remain outside the binary so they can be updated without recompiling the application.

1. Run bun run prod to build and precompress the frontend assets into public/assets.

2. Build the static binary with script/build_amd64_static_binary.sh. This requires Podman or Docker.

   Alternatively, use the sb_static script with Zig. See Use Zig CC as an alternative linker for details.

3. Synchronize public/markdowns/ with rsync -a --delete (apply --delete only to that directory) and public/sitemap.xml with rsync -a. Missing or blank navigation.yml means no Sidebar or Pager. If navigation.yml or index.md is missing, /docs/index shows a setup page listing the missing files; no files are created automatically.

   The setup page includes file format examples and a "Generate starter files" button for signed-in administrators listed in ADMIN_EMAILS. The button creates only missing files and never overwrites existing files. The server needs write permission for public/markdowns/ to use it.

4. Copy bin/crystal_china and bin/tasks to the server and configure the environment in .env; see .env.sample. The deployed application has the following relevant structure:

   .
   ├── .env
   ├── bin
   │   ├── crystal_china
   │   └── tasks
   └── public
       ├── markdowns
       │   ├── navigation.yml
       │   └── ...
       └── sitemap.xml

5. Run bin/tasks db.migrate and bin/tasks db.sync_doc_content to populate the PGroonga-backed document search index. The sync task is safe to rerun after Markdown changes.

6. Add a systemd service to start the server. See crystal_china.service. Procodile can be used instead.

7. Optionally, use Nginx as a reverse proxy. Configuration examples are available in the nginx folder.

Updating documentation

1. Edit files under public/markdowns/ and update navigation.yml when the page should appear in the Sidebar and Pager.
2. Synchronize the complete directory with rsync -a --delete public/markdowns/ .../public/markdowns/ so removed Markdown files also disappear from the server.
3. Run bin/tasks db.sync_doc_content on the server to update searchable content, then refresh the document page. Recompiling or restarting the application is not required.

A Markdown file omitted from navigation.yml remains directly accessible and searchable, but it will not appear in the Sidebar or Pager. Visiting a document also syncs its content into the search index.

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/zw963/website/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• Billy.Zheng - creator and maintainer