Jekyll IS Publisher

Jekyll IS Publisher is a secure, composite GitHub Action for publishing pre-built Jekyll websites (or individual files) to GitHub Pages. It supports full directory synchronization, additional file copying, and optional Telegram notifications with detailed Git change logs.

Features

• 🔄 Synchronize entire Jekyll _site directory with --delete option to clean obsolete files
• 📁 Copy additional files (e.g., sitemaps, robots.txt, custom assets)
• 🛡️ Secure token handling — uses Git credential helper (no tokens in logs)
• 📱 Telegram notifications with Git diff summary (limited to 20 files)
• ⚡ Fail-fast execution with set -euo pipefail
• 🏷️ Custom commit messages with labels and timestamps
• --force push to ensure clean deployment

Usage

Basic Jekyll Deployment

name: Deploy Jekyll Site
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      
      - name: Build Jekyll
        run: |
          gem install bundler
          bundle install
          JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build
      
      - name: Publish to GitHub Pages
        uses: jekyll-is/action-jekyll-is-publish
        with:
          label: "Jekyll CI/CD"
          sync-dir: "_site"
          github-actor: ${{ github.actor }}
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          pages-repository: ${{ github.repository }}
          pages-branch: "gh-pages"

With Additional Files + Telegram

      - name: Publish with extras
        uses: jekyll-is/action-jekyll-is-publish
        with:
          label: "Jekyll + Extras"
          sync-dir: "_site"
          copy-dir: "_extras"  # robots.txt, sitemap.xml, etc.
          github-actor: ${{ github.actor }}
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          pages-repository: ${{ github.repository }}
          telegram-bot-token: ${{ secrets.TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN }}
          telegram-user-id: ${{ secrets.TELEGRAM_USER_ID }}

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
label	Commit message label & notification prefix	✅ Yes	-
sync-dir	Main directory to sync (e.g., _site/)	❌ No	-
copy-dir	Additional files to copy (no delete)	❌ No	-
github-actor	Git author name (e.g., github-actions[bot])	✅ Yes	-
github-token	Personal Access Token or ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}	✅ Yes	-
pages-repository	Target repo (e.g., user/repo)	✅ Yes	-
pages-branch	Target branch (e.g., gh-pages, pages)	❌ No	gh-pages
telegram-bot-token	Telegram Bot API Token	❌ No	-
telegram-user-id	Telegram Chat ID (user or channel)	❌ No	-

Security Notes

✅ Token-safe: Uses git config --global url."https://ACTOR:TOKEN@github.com/".insteadOf — tokens never appear in logs[5]

✅ Scoped permissions: Use GITHUB_TOKEN with contents: write & pages: write workflow permissions

⚠️ Known limitation: git clone --branch fails if branch doesn't exist. Create target branch manually first or use a setup step.

Telegram Notifications

Sends formatted message with:

Publishing by Jekyll CI/CD @ Fri Nov 28 20:18:00 UTC 2025

5 file(s) changed:
​```
A       index.html
M       css/style.css
D       old-page.html
​```

MarkdownV2 formatting with full escaping for Git filenames/symbols.

Workflow Permissions

Add to your workflow YAML:

permissions:
  contents: write
  pages: write
  id-token: write  # For GitHub Pages deployment

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
fatal: Remote branch not found	Create target branch manually: git checkout --orphan gh-pages
rsync: No such file or directory	Verify sync-dir/copy-dir exist in runner workspace
Telegram fails silently	Check bot token permissions & chat ID format
No changes committed	Use git status after rsync to debug

Development

1. Test locally:

   act -j deploy --container-architecture linux/amd64

2. Release new version:

   git tag v1.0.0
   git push origin v1.0.0

License

GPLv3+ © 2025 Ivan Shikhalev