Bridgetown on Windows

The easiest way to use Bridgetown on Windows is to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This provides a Linux development environment in which you can install Bash, Ruby, and other tools necessary to run Bridgetown in an optimized fashion.

Try reading these excellent instructions by GoRails to install Ubuntu Linux on Windows, and then once you’ve reached the “Installing Rails” portion, you can come back and continue:

Install Node and Yarn #

Node is a JavaScript runtime that can execute on a server or development machine. Yarn is a package manager for Node packages. You’ll need Node and Yarn in order to install and use esbuild, the frontend asset compiler that runs alongside Bridgetown.

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt remove cmdtest # this is so we can install Yarn
curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs yarn

Install Bridgetown #

Now all that is left is to install Bridgetown!

gem install bridgetown -N

Create a new Bridgetown site at ./mysite, as well as run bundle install and yarn install automatically:

bridgetown new mysite

cd mysite

Now you should be able to build the site and run a live-reload server:

bin/bridgetown start

Try opening the site up in http://localhost:4000. See something? Awesome, you’re ready to roll! If not, try revisiting your installation and setup steps, and if all else fails, reach out to the Bridgetown community for support.

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