Marmite 0.2.6 Release Notes

We're excited to announce Marmite 0.2.6, a release packed with powerful new features, improvements, and bug fixes. This release introduces themes, series support for grouping related content, enhanced markdown parsing capabilities, and much more.

⚠️ Breaking Changes

--start-theme Command Updated

The --start-theme command now requires a theme name parameter:

# Old (no longer works)
marmite myblog --start-theme

# New (required)
marmite myblog --start-theme mytheme

This change allows you to specify a custom name for your theme when initializing a new site.

🎉 New Features

Themes Support

Marmite now supports themes! Introducing themes in marmite

• Use --theme <name> CLI option to override the theme from configuration
• Configure themes in marmite.yaml with the theme field
• Themes can have their own templates/ and static/ directories
• Embedded theme templates for quick theme creation
• NEW: Use --set-theme <url> to download and install remote themes

# Enable a theme in your configuration
theme: mytheme

Series Feature

Group related content into series with chronological ordering. Perfect for tutorials, course materials, or any sequential content. Organizing Content with Series in Marmite

• Define series in content frontmatter
• Automatic series pages with oldest-to-newest ordering
• Series navigation takes precedence over streams
• RSS and JSON feeds for each series

# In your content frontmatter
series: python-tutorial

# In marmite.yaml
series:
  python-tutorial:
    display_name: "Python Tutorial"
    description: "Learn Python programming step by step"

Enhanced Streams

Streams are now more powerful with filename-based detection and display names. Explore the streams guide and filename-based-streams-organize-content-with-file-naming

• Automatically detect streams from filenames (e.g., dev-my-post.md)
• Configure display names for streams
• Better stream organization and navigation

streams:
  dev:
    display_name: "Development"
    description: "Technical development posts"

Configurable Markdown Parser

Take full control over markdown parsing with extensive configuration options. Configurable Markdown Parser Options

• Enable/disable CommonMark extensions
• Configure rendering options
• Support for alerts, wikilinks, spoilers, and more

markdown_parser:
  render:
    unsafe: true
    figure_with_caption: true
  extension:
    alerts: true
    wikilinks_title_before_pipe: true

Automatic Image Download

Marmite can now automatically download banner images from providers. Learn about image providers

• Configure with image_provider: picsum
• Automatically downloads images when URLs are provided
• Caches images locally for better performance

IndieWeb Microformats

All templates now include proper IndieWeb microformats for better web interoperability. Read about IndieWeb compliance

• h-entry, h-card, and other microformats
• Better semantic HTML structure
• Improved compatibility with IndieWeb tools

Markdown Source Publishing

Publish your markdown source files alongside HTML output. See the source publishing guide

• Enable with publish_md: true
• Link to source repository with source_repository
• Transparency for readers who want to see the source

Additional Features

• Next/Previous Navigation: Automatic navigation links between posts
• HTTPS Support: New --https flag to enforce HTTPS in URLs
• Draft Filtering: Draft posts are now properly excluded from feeds
• Enhanced url_for Function: Better asset URL handling in templates

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fixed RSS feed URLs duplicating http:// protocol (#257)
• Prevented media file links from being converted to HTML links (#290)
• Fixed broken documentation links (#280)
• Resolved issue with generated folder being tracked (#267)
• Fixed auto theme switching based on system preferences (#262)

📦 Dependency Updates

Major Updates

• comrak: 0.35.0 → 0.40.0 (CommonMark parser)
• ureq: Added 3.0.12 (HTTP client for image downloads)

Minor Updates

• clap: 4.5.26 → 4.5.41
• rust-embed: 8.5.0 → 8.7.2
• serde: 1.0.217 → 1.0.219
• serde_json: 1.0.138 → 1.0.141
• chrono: 0.4.39 → 0.4.41
• env_logger: 0.11.6 → 0.11.8
• indexmap: 2.7.1 → 2.10.0
• rss: 2.0.11 → 2.0.12

🔧 New Configuration Options

# Theme configuration
theme: mytheme

# HTTPS enforcement
https: true

# Source publishing
publish_md: true
source_repository: https://github.com/user/repo

# Image provider
image_provider: picsum

# Navigation
show_next_prev_links: true

# Series configuration
series:
  tutorial-name:
    display_name: "Tutorial Display Name"
    description: "Tutorial description"

# Stream display names
streams:
  stream-name:
    display_name: "Stream Display Name"

# Markdown parser (extensive options available)
markdown_parser:
  render:
    unsafe: true
  extension:
    alerts: true

🚀 New CLI Options

• --theme <name>: Override theme from configuration
• --set-theme <url>: Download and install a remote theme
• --https: Enforce HTTPS protocol
• --publish-md: Publish markdown source files
• --source-repository <url>: Set source repository URL
• --image-provider <provider>: Configure image provider
• --show-next-prev-links: Enable/disable navigation links

📚 Documentation

This release includes comprehensive documentation for all new features:

• Getting Started Guide
• Command Line Interface Guide
• Configuration Reference
• Template Reference
• Themes Feature Guide
• Remote Themes Guide
• Series Feature Guide
• Streams Guide
• Draft Posts Guide
• Link Checker with Lychee

🛠️ Development Changes

• Migrated from Just to Mask task runner for development
• Improved development workflow and tooling

Upgrading

To upgrade to Marmite 0.2.6:

# If installed via cargo
cargo install marmite --force

# Or download the latest binary from GitHub releases

Migration Notes

1. If you use --start-theme, update your scripts to include a theme name
2. Review the new configuration options and add any you'd like to use
3. Consider organizing sequential content using the new series feature
4. Enable draft filtering if you have draft posts that shouldn't appear in feeds

What's Next

We're already working on the next release with plans for:

• Theme package management
• More image providers
• Additional IndieWeb features
• Performance improvements
• Image Gallery
• Documentation theme

Thank You

Thanks to all contributors who made this release possible! Special thanks to those who reported bugs, suggested features, and contributed code.

For the complete changelog, see the GitHub releases page.

Please consider giving a ☆ on Marmite Github repository, that helps a lot!