GiBook is a command line tool (and Node.js library) for building beautiful programming books and exercises using GitHub/Git and Markdown. You can see an example: Learn Javascript.
GitBook can be installed from NPM using:
$ npm install gitbook -g
You can serve a repository as a book using:
$ gitbook serve ./repository
Or simply build the static website using:
$ gitbook build ./repository --output=./outputFolder
Options for commands build and serve are:
-t, --title <name> Name of the book to generate, defaults to repo name
-i, --intro <intro> Description of the book to generate
-g, --github <repo_path> ID of github repo like : username/repo
A book is a GitHub repository containing at least 2 files: README.md and SUMMARY.md.
As usual, it should contains an introduction for your book. It will be automatically added to the final summary.
The SUMMARY.md defines your book's structure. It should contain a list of chapters, linking to their respective pages.
Example:
# Summary
This is the summary of my book.
* [section 1](section1/README.md)
* [example 1](section1/example1.md)
* [example 2](section1/example2.md)
* [section 2](section2/README.md)
* [example 1](section2/example1.md)
Files that are not included in the SUMMARY.md will not be processed by gitbook.
A book can contain interactive exercises (currently only in Javascript but Python and Ruby are coming soon ;) ). An exercise is a code challenge provided to the reader, which is given a code editor to write a solution which is checked against the book author's validation code.
An exercise is defined by 4 simple parts:
- Exercise Message/Goals (in markdown/text)
- Initial code to show to the user, providing a starting point
- Solution code, being a correct solution to the exercise
- Validation code that tests the correctness of the user's input
Exercises need to start and finish with a separation bar (--- or ***). It should contain 3 code elements (base, solution and validation).
---
Define a variable `x` equal to 10.
```js
var x =
```
```js
var x = 10;
```
```js
assert(x == 10);
```
---