Installation Changed

When I first installed Nikola a year ago, I just used pip3 to install the Nikola package. That version of Nikola broke when Python was upgraded from 3.7 to 3.8. The current recommended procedure is to install Nikola in a virtual environment.

Update Procedure

1. Install python3-venv on Ubuntu:

   sudo apt-get install python3-venv

2. Create a venv called "nikola":

   cd ~/src/tschutter.github.io
   python3 -m venv nikola

3. Add nikola dir to the .gitignore file:

   grep -qxF 'nikola' .gitignore ||\
     echo "$(echo nikola | cat - .gitignore | sort)" > .gitignore
   git commit -m ".gitignore: added nikola venv" .gitignore

4. Enable the new venv:

   cd nikola
   source bin/activate

5. Upgrade pip, setuptools, and wheel modules in the venv:

   bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

6. Install Nikola:

   bin/python -m pip install --upgrade "Nikola[extras]"

7. Disable old version of Nikola:

   sudo mv /usr/local/bin/nikola /usr/local/bin/nikola-old
   cd /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages
   sudo mv nikola nikola-old
   sudo mv Nikola-8.0.2.dist-info Nikola-old-8.0.2.dist-info

See also:

• Nikola -> Getting Started

• Python Virtual Environments in Five Minutes

• venv — Creation of virtual environments

Setup Procedure

1. Install Nikola:

   pip install --upgrade "Nikola[extras]"

2. Initialize the user site:

   nikola init --demo ~/src/tschutter.github.io

3. Create a tschutter.github.io repository on GitHub.

4. Connect the local repository to the GitHub repository:

   cd ~/src/tschutter.github.io
   git init
   git remote add origin git@github.com:tschutter/tschutter.github.io.git

5. Create a .gitignore file:

   cache
   .doit.db*
   __pycache__
   output
   .ipynb_checkpoints
   .DS_Store

6. Commit initial files:

   git checkout -b src
   git add .
   git commit -m "initial checkin"
   git push -u origin master

7. Edit conf.py.

8. Deploy to tschutter.github.io:

   nikola github_deploy

See: Nikola Static Site Generator