Unlock the Power of Rust: Exploring Three Exceptional Static Site Generators
When it comes to building websites, Rust is not typically the first language that comes to mind. However, there are several impressive Rust projects that defy this trend. In this article, we’ll delve into three remarkable static site generators built with Rust: Cobalt, mdBook, and Zola. We’ll examine their features, documentation, and production readiness to help you decide which one is right for your next project.
Cobalt: Simplicity and Speed
Cobalt is a Rust-based static site generator designed to simplify the website creation process. Its primary objective is to reduce the workload for projects getting started with their website. Cobalt focuses on three key pillars: simplicity, ease of use, and speed.
With Cobalt, you can create a new project using the cobalt init command, which generates a directory structure that includes templates, data, and posts. The CLI tool is reminiscent of the popular create-react-app tool. Cobalt’s templating engine is straightforward, and you can access data from your templates using interpolation.
Key Features:
- Simple file structure
- CLI tool for generating project files and hosting locally
- Configuration file
_cobalt.ymlfor quick site and page/post options - Support for JSON, YAML, and TOML files for loading dynamic data
mdBook: Markdown-Based Documentation
mdBook is a Rust-based static site generator primarily used for generating documentation and simple static websites. It allows you to write pages using markdown and publish them as an online book-like website. mdBook comes with a command-line tool and exposes its functionality as a Rust crate, making it easy to integrate into other projects.
Key Features:
- Markdown-based content
- CLI tool for generating, building, testing, and serving projects
- Ability to add preprocessors
- API documentation for integration into existing projects
Zola: A Feature-Rich Static Site Generator
Zola is a single executable with no dependencies, making installation a breeze. It’s ideal for generating blogs, knowledge bases, landing pages, or a combination of these. Zola focuses on providing a rich set of features, including shortcodes, built-in search indexes, and multilingual support.
Key Features:
- Elaborate documentation
- Ability to define shortcodes for common HTML elements
- Built-in search index
- Support for multilingual sites
- Automatic image resizing
Production Readiness: A Comparative Analysis
When evaluating production readiness, we considered release frequency, deployment configurations, and troubleshooting support. Cobalt has a relatively slow release cycle but provides deployment configurations for TravisCI, Git, and GitLab CI. mdBook is actively maintained, with regular releases and examples for setting up continuous integration. Zola excels in production readiness, with excellent documentation, a rich set of features, and continuous integration support.
Stats That Matter:
- Cobalt: 880 GitHub stars, 8,181 all-time downloads on crates.io, 41 versions published
- mdBook: 5.1k GitHub stars, 1,430,412 all-time downloads on crates.io, 55 versions published
- Zola: 4.3k GitHub stars, 31 versions published
Conclusion
In conclusion, each of these Rust static site generators has its unique strengths and weaknesses. Cobalt is ideal for quickly creating scalable static sites, while mdBook is better suited for documentation projects. Zola, with its rich set of features and excellent documentation, is the clear winner when it comes to production readiness. Ultimately, the choice depends on your specific project needs and preferences.