Cannot set site.url to a different address than the --host flag address in development

[richardxia]

• I believe this to be a bug, not a question about using Jekyll.
• I updated to the latest Jekyll (or) if on GitHub Pages to the latest github-pages
• I read the CONTRIBUTION file at https://jekyllrb.com/docs/contributing/
• This is a feature request.

---

• I am on (or have tested on) macOS 10+
• I am on (or have tested on) Debian/Ubuntu GNU/Linux
• I am on (or have tested on) Fedora GNU/Linux
• I am on (or have tested on) Arch GNU/Linux
• I am on (or have tested on) Other GNU/Linux
• I am on (or have tested on) Windows 10+

---

• I was trying to install.
• There is a broken Plugin API.
• I had an error on GitHub Pages, and I have reproduced it locally.
• I had an error on GitHub Pages, and GitHub Support said it was a Jekyll Bug.
• I had an error on GitHub Pages and I did not test it locally.
• I was trying to build.
• It was another bug.

My Reproduction Steps

When running jekyll serve --host 0.0.0.0, the site.url variable gets set to http://0.0.0.0:4000 when used in templates.

The Output I Wanted

I'd like to be able to set a site URL that is different from the network interface that the Jekyll server is listening to. I am doing development in a VM, so the hostname that I want my browser to see is different from the IP address/network interface that the Jekyll server is bound to. For example, since my VM has a host-only network interface at 192.168.33.10, I'd like to set http://192.168.33.10:4000 as the site URL that Jekyll renders so that any absolute URL still works, while still instructing Jekyll to listen on the 0.0.0.0 interface.

I understand that I can set --host 192.168.33.10, but one additional complication is that I am actually running Jekyll inside of a Docker container inside a VM. The Docker container won't allow any child processes to bind to 192.168.33.10.

/cc @jekyll/build

[DirtyF]

It will not be set if you set JEKYLL_ENV=production and run jekyll serve.

[richardxia]

Is there any chance that this could be configurable for non-production environments? I'd like to not have to use JEKYLL_ENV=production in development, especially because I have a Google Analytics tracking ID that I've configured to only be used in production.

[DirtyF]

You can define JEKYLL_ENV to whatever suits you the most, e.g. virtual, local URL override is only triggered when JEKYLL_ENV=development

[richardxia]

I see, thanks, that workaround works for me. However, I am still a bit wary of using a different environment in the long term, since I don't know what other config values, if any, get set manually by Jekyll in the development environment.

[DirtyF]

Another workaround is to override default url in a separate config file:
bundle exec jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config_local.yml

[parkr]

@richardxia If you're using a VM, I'd highly recommend setting up a separate webserver (nginx is very easy to install and setup) and using jekyll build --watch to regenerate your files. We have Docker images which do this.

We could whitelist 0.0.0.0 but we have gone back and forth with 127.0.0.1 and 0.0.0.0 a few times and I think we've finally settled on 127.0.0.1 for our "localhost". Using JEKYLL_ENV=virtual will not be problematic. If you search for "development" in this repo, you'll see that it's very infrequent for us to modify values based on the environment.

[richardxia]

Thanks for the suggestion, @parkr. That solution seems straightforward enough for me to use. Since this is just a development VM, I think I'll use python -m SimpleHTTPServer 4000 instead of installing nginx, but the end result is same.

[ZiroKyl]

@richardxia, @parkr I simple run:
in terminal1: bundle exec jekyll build --watch
and
in terminal2: bundle exec jekyll serve --skip-initial-build --no-watch --host 0.0.0.0 --port 80 😉

#6034