sblg — static blog utility

I use sblg to track versions for several systems. A blog article, then, consists of release notes for a given version of the system. I usually just want to post the newest version or two on the website, and an Atom feed of the same.

Let's start with the Atom feed. First, I stipulate that no alternate links exist, because I don't want to have a separate file for each and every version. Second, I make the article contents be inlined in the feed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>Example Feed</title>
  <link href="http://example.org/atom.xml" rel="self" />
  <link href="http://example.org/" />
  <id data-sblg-id="1" />
  <updated data-sblg-updated="1" />
  <entry data-sblg-forall="1" data-sblg-entry="1" data-sblg-content="1" data-sblg-altlink="0" />
</feed>

Alternatively, I might omit the data-sblg-content attribute and have it print only the <aside> content within the entry, which is the default. This is a matter of choice: the data-sblg-content attribute will make the entire article (including the header) be included in the feed. It's up to you. I then add articles (raw XML) to an ARTICLES variable in my Makefile, and build an atom.xml that depends on these files.

ARTICLES = article1.xml article2.xml atom.xml: $(ARTICLES) sblg -a -o $@ $(ARTICLES)

Articles (fragments, really) are written as specified in sblg(1).

<article data-sblg-article="1">
  <header>
    <h3>Version 0.0.10</h3>
    <time datetime="2013-07-09">09/07/2013</time>
    <address>Kristaps Dzonsons</address>
  </header>
  <p>
    Release notes here.
  </p>
 </article>

Finally, I have the blog template note a selection of recent entries and prohibit the permanent link.

<article data-sblg-article="1" data-sblg-permlink="0"></article>

That's it! Now all I need to do is make some release notes and add the release to my Makefile. The rest—feed, list of recent releases—is auto-generated by sblg(1).