Deploy static site with Jekyll Picture Tag

Hi,
I want to host my static site here on Render. However, it uses Jekyll Picture Tag, a very useful Jekyll plugin that relies on libvips-tools. While libvips is available, the tools package is not: this makes it impossible to compile my site.

As I see it, I have these options:

  1. I can pre-build the entire site, storing the generated images in git. This is very inefficent, and not how git was meant to be used. It is thus a last resort. If Render allowed me to simply upload my site, rather than going through Git, that would also work wonderfully.
  2. I can upload the needed executable into my repo, and somehow place it on the PATH. This would be more ideal for me, since it offloads the build work to the build server: however, I’d need a weird custom script, which isn’t ideal
  3. Somehow, the libvips-tools package is added to the environment. AFAIK, there is no way for me to do this. However, since it’s quite a small package (90 KB), and libvips is already available on the build server (otherwise it wouldn’t get as far in the build as it does), I think it’s very doable for Render administration to add this package to their build images.

What are your thoughts? Where can I post to most effectively get the Render administration’s attention?

I am currently going the route of having a script enter the directory with the built site, make it a git repo, upload that to github, and then delete the .git folder. Let’s hope github doesn’t kill me.

Hey @calumapplepie

Welcome to the Render community - we monitor the community here so you have our attention :slight_smile:

We recently added libvips to our build images as it became the default image processor in Ruby on Rails, I’ll take this to the team to see what we can do here,

Regards,

@calumapplepie

Good news, libvips-tools is being added to our images as you’ve requested - this should be available over the next few days for new deployments.

Thank you!

Calum,
Just to close this out - this is now available,

Regards,

John B