Jekyll has a built-in auto-regeneration feature that watches your source folder for changes and then re-builds your site. The jekyll serve command has this enabled by default and you can use run jekyll build --watch to manually enable it there.
On Windows, you need to install one extra tool, or rather Gem, to enable this functionality. Simply run the following command from the command line.
gem install wdm
Alternatively, if you use a Gemfile, you can check if Jekyll runs on Windows and only then install the wdm Gem.
Open the Gemfile file that is in the root of your jekyll site. Add the following line at the end of this file.
gem 'wdm', '~> 0.1.0' if Gem.win_platform?
Jekyll uses the listen Gem for auto-regeneration. The listen Gem is a dependency of Jekyll. Find the version of the listen Gem installed by the Jekyll Gem.
gem list | findstr listen
Some versions of listen do not work on Windows. jekyll/jekyll-help#64 has some information on versions that worked on Windows in the past. To install a specific version of the listen Gem, run the command below and specify the exact version.
gem install listen -v 3.1.5
It is recommended to use listen version 2.7.8 or later.
Click here if you’re running Jekyll 3.3.0.
Take a deep breath! You’ve now installed everything you need to run Jekyll on Windows. There are a few minor things you should know to make sure that your sites build smoothly and without problems. Click the button below to proceed.
Copyright © 2017 Sverrir Sigmundarson, licensed under CC-BY-4.0.