| name | building-blog |
| description | How to preview blog posts locally using the Roq-based dev server: blog-preview.sh detects your changed posts and opens them automatically in your default browser; serve-noguides.sh starts the server only, for when you prefer to navigate to the URL yourself.
|
Building Blog Posts
Supported Platforms
This workflow is supported on Linux, macOS, and Windows through WSL2.
Java 21+ is required. The repository includes a ./mvnw wrapper — no
separate Maven install is needed.
Quick Start
Run the full preview pipeline in one command — starts the Roq dev
server, waits for it to be ready, detects which posts you changed, and
opens the right URLs in your browser:
just blog-preview
Or directly:
bash blog-preview.sh
To start the dev server without the auto-open behaviour:
./serve-noguides.sh
Then browse to http://localhost:8042/blog/.
How It Works
The site is built with Quarkus Roq,
a Quarkus-based static site generator. ./mvnw quarkus:dev starts a
live-reload dev server — edits to content files are picked up
automatically without a server restart.
blog-preview.sh starts the dev server in the background, waits for
it to be ready (up to 300 seconds), then detects recently changed posts
and opens the right URLs in your browser. Press Ctrl-C to stop.
Detect and Open
The script auto-detects what you were working on and opens the right page:
| Changed posts | Preview URLs |
|---|
| 1 post | /blog/ (listing) + /blog/<slug>/ (deep-link) |
| 2–4 posts | /blog/ (listing) + a tab for each post |
| 5+ posts | /blog/ (listing only), unless git narrows it |
| No changes | /blog/ (listing only) |
The slug is derived from the filename: strip the YYYY-MM-DD- prefix
and the file extension (.adoc, .asciidoc, or .md).
Change detection uses a .blog-preview-last-run timestamp file on
repeat runs, and falls back to git diff/git log on first run.
Delete .blog-preview-last-run to reset.
Profiles
| Script | Profile | What it includes |
|---|
./serve.sh | (default) | Full site with all guides |
./serve-noguides.sh | noguides | Site without guides (fast) |
./serve-only-latest-guides.sh | only-latest-guides | Site with latest + main guides |
For blog-only work, serve-noguides.sh is the fastest option.
Blog Post File Conventions
- Location:
content/posts/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.adoc (or .asciidoc, .md)
- Front matter fields:
layout: post, title, tags, synopsis, author
author must match a key in _data/authors.yaml- Tags: lowercase, space-separated — e.g.
tags: extension kafka
- Images: store in
public/assets/images/posts/<slug>/, reference with
:imagesdir: /assets/images/posts/<slug>
Future-Dated Posts
Posts with a date value in the future are served normally by the
local dev server. No special flag or workaround is needed.
Iteration Loop
Edit content/posts/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.adoc (or .asciidoc / .md) → save → Roq rebuilds → browser refreshes
Quarkus dev mode watches for file changes and triggers an incremental
rebuild automatically.
Troubleshooting
Port already in use — Both blog-preview.sh and ./serve-noguides.sh
default to port 8042.
First, check whether it is a leftover preview from a previous run
(e.g. a java process launched by mvnw). If so, kill it and retry.
Always tell the user before using a different port — do not
silently switch ports without informing them. If the conflict cannot
be resolved, ask the user which port to use, then set the environment
variable:
QUARKUS_HTTP_PORT=8081 bash blog-preview.sh
or for the bare server:
QUARKUS_HTTP_PORT=8081 ./serve-noguides.sh
Changes not appearing — Quarkus dev mode watches source files. If a
change is not picked up, press s in the terminal running the dev
server to force a restart, or stop and re-run ./serve-noguides.sh.
Post not appearing — Check that the file is in content/posts/
with the correct YYYY-MM-DD-slug.adoc (or .asciidoc, .md)
naming and that the front matter layout: post and author fields
are present and valid.
Slow first start — The first run downloads Maven dependencies.
Subsequent starts are fast.
blog-preview.sh exits with "Server process exited unexpectedly"
— Maven started but then died. Scroll up in the terminal to find the
build error. Common causes: corrupted local Maven repository, a
missing or broken dependency, or a compile error in the project.
blog-preview.sh exits with "neither mvnw nor mvn found" — The
./mvnw wrapper is missing or not executable. Run chmod +x mvnw
to restore it. Do not attempt to install Maven system-wide — the
wrapper is the correct entry point for this project.
