Blog/content/posts/blog-deployment.md

title, date, draft, tags

title	date	draft	tags
Blog Deployment featuring Obsidian, Hugo and Gitea Actions	2025-05-02	true

I always wanted to share my own experiences to give others idea or help them on their projects, but I didn't want to maintain the con

🧠 Goals

• Write blog posts in my Obsidian vault
• Automatically detect changes in the Blog/ folder
• Sync changes to a separate blog repository
• Let the blog repository handle site generation and deployment
• Use Hugo as the static site generator, with version updates handled automatically

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🔁 Workflow Overview

Here's the flow:

1. Edit Blog Content in the Blog/ folder of my Obsidian vault.
2. Obsidian Repo Workflow (via Gitea Actions):
   • Detects changes in the Blog/ folder.
   • Clones the blog repository using a secure token.
   • Syncs content from the Obsidian vault to the blog repository.
   • Commits and pushes changes.
3. Blog Repo Workflow (also using Gitea Actions):
   • Pulls the latest Hugo release version.
   • Compares it with the current version.
   • Downloads it if necessary.
   • Builds the blog using the new version.
   • If the build fails, tries the previous version.
   • Pushes the updated static site to the target branch (e.g., gh-pages or public)

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⚙️ Key Implementation Details

🔐 Secure Token Usage

A Gitea secret is used to securely clone the blog repository. In the Obsidian repo workflow:

env:
  TOKEN: ${{ secrets.BLOG_DEPLOY_TOKEN }}
run: |
  git clone https://${TOKEN}@git.example.com/user/blog.git /appli/data/blog

This avoids exposing any credentials in code or logs.

📦 Hugo Version Check

The workflow checks for the latest Hugo release from GitHub:

latest_version=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/gohugoio/hugo/releases/latest | jq -r .tag_name)

If it's newer than the currently used version, it downloads and installs it in /appli/data/blog/bin.

🔄 Sync from Obsidian to Blog Repo

Using rsync -ah --delete ensures the content in /Blog is mirrored properly:

rsync -ah --delete Blog/ /appli/data/blog/content/

🧪 Fallback on Hugo Failure

If building the site with the new version fails, the old binary is used as a fallback, ensuring the site doesn't break unexpectedly.

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🚀 Results

This setup gives me:

• A clean separation between content editing (Obsidian) and publishing (Blog repo).
• Automated static site builds without needing GitHub Actions or external CI.
• Full control over the Hugo version, testing, and rollback.

---

📍 Next Steps

• Add preview and validation steps before committing
• Monitor Hugo releases for breaking changes
• Expand workflows to manage themes and assets

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If you're self-hosting Gitea and want to build your own blog workflow, I hope this gives you a solid starting point. Feel free to reach out with questions!