metalsmith-start

Development server for metalsmith.

Consumes the standard metalsmith.json.
Consumes metalsmith.js.
Auto-recompiles when files are changed.
Starts development server and LiveReload.

Command-line

Run metalsmith-start or metalstart in your Metalsmith's project directory.

metalsmith-start

See --help for more options.

Production

metalsmith-start honors the following variables:

NODE_ENV
PORT

If either NODE_ENV is set to production, then development features (such as LiveReload) will be disabled by default.

This means that you can run a production setup using:

env NODE_ENV=production PORT=4000 metalsmith-start

This also means you can push your repo to Heroku with no changes and it'll work just fine.

Using metalsmith.js

If a file called metalsmith.js is found in the current directory, it's assumed it's a JS module that returns a Metalsmith instance.

Below is a sample metalsmith.js:

var Metalsmith = require('metalsmith')

var app = Metalsmith(__dirname)
  .source('./src')
  .destination('./public')
  .use(...)

if (module.parent) {
  module.exports = app
} else {
  app.build(function (err) { if (err) throw err })
}

Superstatic

If superstatic.json is found in the current directory, it'll automatically be picked up. This allows you to, say, use cleanUrls to allow pages to be served without the .html extension.

See superstatic for more information.

Programatic usage

var Runner = require('metalsmith-start').Runner

var ms = new Metalsmith(dir)
  .use(...)
  .use(...)

var r = new Runner(ms)
r.start(function () {
  console.log('started on ' + r.port)
})

Thanks

ricostacruz.com · GitHub @rstacruz · Twitter @rstacruz