Deploying gitbook to Github Page with Azure DevOps

After setting up the Gitbook locally, if you need to publish the written book to your Github Page, you need to manually push the _book folder separately to Github. If each modification of book, first you need to do run gitbook buildand then use git to push the rebuilt _book folder into github repo. The whole process is quite tedious. Using Azure Devops can automate this process and deploy Gitbook to Github Page.

Prerequisites

Before automating this process, be sure a few things are already in place:

• Intalling the gitbook locally. Please refer to Publish your GitBook on GitHub Page. It is recommended that you check the official gitbook documentation, which provides instructions on how to use gitbook.

• Your site committed to an Azure DevOps. Please refer to Azure Repos Documentation.

• An GitHub repository provisioned and Github Page enabled. It is recommended that you check the official GitHub Pages documentation.

Setup your Build Pipeline

1. Sign in to your Azure DevOps organization and navigate to your project.

2. In your project, navigate to the Pipelines page. Then choose the action to create a new pipeline.

3. Walk through the steps of the wizard by first clicking Use the classic editor and selecting Azure Repos Git as the location of your source code.

4. You might be redirected to Select a template. If apply Configuration as code, enter your YAML file path as azure-pipelines.yml. You now have a working YAML pipeline (azure-pipelines.yml) in your repository that's ready for you to customize!

5. When you're ready to make changes to your pipeline, select it in the Pipelines page, and then Edit the azure-pipelines.yml file.

Customize your Build Pipeline

The steps to create a pipeline are simple, but it is more difficult to write your customized azure-pipelines.yml file. This involves the logical steps of the deployment of the environment. The example below is the Pipeline I created for gitbook. The comment section explains the deployment logic.

# Use the master branch as a trigger
 trigger: 
-master

# Create proxy image for installation environment
 pool: 
  vmImage: 'Ubuntu-16.04' 

# Environment（Node.js，SSHKey）
steps:
- task: NodeTool@0 
  inputs:
    versionSpec: '10.x'
  displayName: 'Installing Node.js...'

- task: InstallSSHKey@0
  inputs:
    hostName: 
    sshPublicKey: 
    sshKeySecureFile: id_rsa 
  displayName: 'Installing SSH...'

# install gitbook
- script: |
    npm install gitbook-cli -g;
    gitbook build
  displayName: 'Installing dependencies...'

# Create a script to push the static files on the agent to the Github Page
 -script: 
    git remote add upstream git@github.com: chenhao2020 / pub-book.git; 
    cp -R _book / *.; 
    Rm -rf node_modules; username 
    rm -rf _book; 
    rm -rf azure-pipelines.yml; 
    git config --global user.name "username" ; 
    git config --global user.email "email" ; 
    git checkout -b gh-pages; 
    git add ; 
    git commit -m 'Update docs' ; 
    git push upstream gh-pages --force 
  displayName: 'Deploying ...'

# Code security test
 -task: WhiteSource Bolt @ 20 
  displayName: 'Run WhiteSource Bolt'

Upload private key

In the left library, find the secret files and upload the private key. Click the private key to authorize the task.

Check if the deployment is successful

Now you create a new article locally and git push to the devops repo to see if it is successfully deployed.