I’ve been trying to setup a static blog for Nemesis organization. There are many examples how to do it for project pages including this doc from Wyam author, Dave Glick, unfortunately according to this GitHub doc User and Organization pages are diffirent and can only be published from master branch top directory. There is no easy way to cram both sources and static site generated by Wyam into repository root directory.

Orphaned git branches to the rescue!

Orphaned git branch is esentially a branch that exists in the same repostory but has nothing in common with it’s master branch. Through orphaned branches, git allows multiple parallel unrelated histories.

So I decided to use master branch - the only legit source for User or Organization github page - as deployment target, and sources branch as orphaned branch with blog sources.

To create parallel history I did:

git checkout --orphan sources
git rm -rf .        #to remove all files
rm '.gitignore'
echo "# nemesissoft.github.io" > README.md
git add README.md
git commit -a -m "Initial Commit"
git push origin sources

Then you need to create the blog sources

dotnet tool install -g Wyam.Tool
wyam new -r Blog            #create new blog scaffold
wyam -r Blog -t CleanBlog   #build using specific theme

Run it within a test server and let it watch and auto reload on source file changes:

wyam  --recipe Blog --theme CleanBlog --watch --preview

Preview server listening at http://localhost:5080 ...

All you need then is a build process that will run Wyam and deploy your blog from sources branch and commit output to master branch to allow GitGub pages to host it: Add appveyor.yml file with content:

branches:
  only:
    - sources
    
environment:
  access_token:
    # EDIT the encrypted version of your GitHub access token
    secure: iIghceLJ...

install:
  - git submodule update --init --recursive
  - mkdir ..\Wyam
  - mkdir ..\output
  # Fetch the latest version of Wyam 
  - "curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Wyamio/Wyam/master/RELEASE -o ..\\Wyam\\wyamversion.txt"
  - set /P WYAMVERSION=< ..\Wyam\wyamversion.txt
  - echo %WYAMVERSION%
  # Get and unzip the latest version of Wyam
  - ps: Start-FileDownload "https://github.com/Wyamio/Wyam/releases/download/$env:WYAMVERSION/Wyam-$env:WYAMVERSION.zip" -FileName "..\Wyam\Wyam.zip"
  - 7z x ..\Wyam\Wyam.zip -o..\Wyam -r

build_script:
  - dotnet ..\Wyam\Wyam.dll --output ..\output

on_success:
  # Switch branches to master, clean the folder, copy everything in from the Wyam output, and commit/push
  # See http://www.appveyor.com/docs/how-to/git-push for more info
  - git config --global credential.helper store
  # EDIT your Git email and name
  - git config --global user.email $env:op_build_user_email
  - git config --global user.name $env:op_build_user
  - ps: Add-Content "$env:USERPROFILE\.git-credentials" "https://$($env:access_token):x-oauth-basic@github.com`n"
  - git checkout master
  - git rm -rf .
  - xcopy ..\output . /E
  # EDIT your domain name or remove if not using a custom domain
  #- echo wyam.io > CNAME
  # EDIT the origin of your repository - have to reset it here because AppVeyor pulls from SSH, but GitHub won't accept SSH pushes
  - git remote set-url origin https://github.com/nemesissoft/nemesissoft.github.io.git
  - git add -A
  - git commit -a -m "Commit from AppVeyor"
  - git push

Create your build pipeline on AppVeyor.com for free and watch your blog appear on {user or organization name}.github.io.