A static site made with Swift

With Hugo, Eleventy, Astro and a dozen more well-maintained static site generators out there, I built this site with Publish, by John Sundell. It is a debatable decision, so let me explain it.

The reason, beyond not wanting anything to do with WordPress

Publish lets me define the site as a struct:

struct DavidNovella: Website {
    enum SectionID: String, WebsiteSectionID {
        case apps
        case blog
    }

    var url = URL(string: "https://davidnovella.es")!
    var name = "David Novella"
    var language: Language { .spanish }
}

And the theme as functions that return HTML, with the compiler keeping watch:

func makeItemHTML(for item: Item<Site>,
                  context: PublishingContext<Site>) throws -> HTML {
    HTML(
        .lang(context.site.language),
        .head(for: item, on: context.site),
        .body {
            SiteHeader(currentPath: item.path)
            Wrapper {
                H1(item.title)
                Div(item.body).class("content")
            }
        }
    )
}

There are no templates with double braces and no errors that only show up at build time. If I make up a metadata field, it does not compile. It is the same feeling as working with SwiftUI, applied to HTML.

The drawbacks

They are worth stating:

• Publish has not been updated in a while. The latest tagged version is 0.9.0. It compiles without trouble on Swift 6.4, but do not expect fixes.
• The community is small. Compared with Hugo there is little written about it and few themes to crib from.
• The plugin ecosystem is minimal. Whatever you need, you will probably have to write yourself — although writing a PublishingStep takes surprisingly little code.

Conclusion

As an exercise in building a site I can maintain with little effort, I think it is a good start. Further down the line I will see whether I have to move to another generator or fork Publish and change a thing or two.