gitbook build shouldn't delete files in output directory

[jbryer]

It appears that when I build the site gitbook first deletes all the files (and even the directory perhaps, I can't tell for sure) before creating the new files. It would be preferred if it simply overwrote the existing files. This is an issue as my .git repository is being deleted each time I build.

[ramnathv]

@jbryer Why would you want to put your _book folder under version control at all, since it is being automatically generated?

[jbryer]

@ramnathv I am trying to push it to gh-pages branch. Perhaps a related feature would be to have support builtin for using Github and gh-pages. Here one approach to managing a repository with gh-pages: https://gist.github.com/chrisjacob/825950

[ramnathv]

@jbryer Got it! I have been doing it manually, uploading the _book folder to gh-pages, but it should be fairly easy to write up a script to automate the process. Maybe this could come with gitbook, where you could do something like

$ gitbook build -g user/repo
$ gitbook publish -g user/repo

Here is how I have been doing it from the commandline, and plan to automate by creating a makefile

gitbook build -g user/repo
cd _book
git init
git commit --allow-empty -m 'update book'
git checkout -b gh-pages
touch .nojekyll
git add .
git commit -am "update book"
git push git@github.com:user/repo gh-pages --force

You can probably add this as a hook to your .git folder so that whenever you commit the source of your book, this sequence is automatically run, thereby keeping the gh-pages branch in sync with your markdown. Potentially, you could also add integration with Travis so that this step is carried out remotely.

UPDATE. I would actually save this script in ./git/hooks/pre-push. So, whenever you push your source to the github repo, the book will automatically be built and pushed by force to the gh-pages branch.