jekyll: Jekyll fails finding files

This is really ugly because there is no documentation or hint about having to put all folders into source. The error message with an incorrect path looks like a bug in Jekyll, not like it is on purpose. It doesn’t make sense that Jekyll actually finds the layout in <correct path> which is outside source but then tries to load it from <wrong path>.

So this should at least be documented in the configuration and provide a meaningful error message. It not expected, that (some of) the folder config settings are only relative to source.

But I’d rather suggest to implement this as an optional feature. I don’t see why it should be enforced to have layouts and includes inside source folder. I’d like to separate them from the content but I don’t like needing an entire additional gem and repo for a Jekyll theme when I want to have one website in one place.

It could also work with an additional config setting content_dir, so source_dir could be the enforced parent path but content can live in a dedicated source folder.

We had no tests for them, because all the tests passed! Urgh.

Regardless of the reasons, the error message jekyll shows doesn’t make sense:

Error reading file <correct path>: No such file or directory - <wrong path> 

I’m currently trying to do a multi-site Jekyll build with some shared components (_sass, _layouts, etc.). I was going down the path of using plugins listed in the following blog post:

http://maximebf.com/blog/2013/07/multi-site-jekyll/ https://gist.github.com/maximebf/5992910#file-copy_assets-rb

However they failed to work giving me crazy long rb_sysopen failures where the entire path was appended to my base path again. I gave up on this and tried to roll my own. I was going to use symbolic links first and then try to write plugins to change the location of _layouts and such and ran into the exact same bizare thing!

Error reading file /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/post.html: No such file or directory @ rb_sysopen - /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_penguindreams/home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/post.html 
Error reading file /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/default.html: No such file or directory @ rb_sysopen - /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_penguindreams/home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/default.html 
Error reading file /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/page.html: No such file or directory @ rb_sysopen - /home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_penguindreams/home/cassius/webspace/jekyll-foundation/_layouts/page.html 

And that’s how I discovered this bug. 😃 Symbolic links don’t even seem to work, even with --safe off. @parkr What changed to require the entire source to be in the source directory? Is there a way to write a plugin to overwrite this and get back to the original functionality? Could you show me where in the code it is?

It also saddens me to read that, according to @mattr-, Jekyll once supported different locations for layouts and plugins in configuration, which would make multi-site a lot easier.

It makes sense to me for the source to contain your entire source,

I find the case against this being shared components between multiple sites; for DRY principals. For plugins, the only away around this currently seems to be to turn them into gems. 😕