Gustwind is an experimental site generator built on top of JSON definitions using Deno. The goal of the design is to allow component oriented development of large scale sites. Conceptually it’s split as follows:

• Development mode lets you preview the site and modify page definitions to commit later
• Production mode generates pure static HTML with CSS inlined to the files
• Components defined with a JSON based component abstraction included allow you to extract shared markup and bind data to it
• Data sources define how your data is fetched. At page level, it can then be connected and bound to components.
• Transforms let you alter data to fit the current need. You can use them for example convert Markdown input to HTML or reverse the order of an array to generate a blog index in a specific order.
• Route definition binds it all together.

Please see the documentation to learn more about the concepts.

Usage

The easiest way to consume the project is to use the CLI:

deno install -A --unstable --no-check -f https://deno.land/x/gustwind/cli.ts

The APIs are also available as modules if you need more control.

It’s a good idea to use a recent version of Deno and I recommend using 1.16.0 or newer.

Data flow

Gustwind accepts TypeScript, Markdown, JSON definitions including Twind (Tailwind) classes and emits HTML and JavaScript.

It’s possible to customize the input formats and it can load data from asynchronous sources, say GraphQL APIs, so it can be used with headless content APIs.

Example sites

Given Gustwind is still in a rapid development phase, the APIs change every once in a while. The source of this site is the most up to date resource and I’ve listed other examples below:

• jster.net - Source
• sidewind.js.org - Source
• dragjs - Source

Earlier related work

• Tailspin was an experimental site generator built with partially the same technology. In this project, the ideas have been largely re-implemented and taken further. In some ways Tailspin went further, though, as it implemented component level introspection (types) and editors while allowing JSX syntax.
• Antwar was a React based static site generator. The experiences with Antwar over years have been put to good use in this project.

Development

Use deno task to see available tasks and to run them.

To test the cli locally, use deno install --no-check -A -f --unstable -n gustwind ./cli.ts. A symlink would likely work as well.

Publishing to deno.land

Publishing to deno.land goes through the publish utility.

Publishing to npm

1. deno task build:gustwind-for-npm <VERSION> where VERSION is 0.1.0 for example
2. cd gustwind/npm
3. npm publish. You may need to pass --otp here as well (preferred for security)