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.