hugo-installer

Installs Hugo into your repository.

What it does

Hugo is one of the most popular static site generators. In the world of web development we usually choose npm as our dependency management solution. Hugo, however, is written in Go - and thus not integrated into the npm module ecosystem. Instead, users are asked to install Hugo globally on their systems. Suboptimal, really.

But don't you worry, Hugo Installer is here to help! It's a small Node.js script which you can use to fetch the correct Hugo binary for your system, e.g. via a postinstall hook within a package.json file. Neat!

Features include:

• 💻 Compatible with all operating systems and system architectures (Windows, MacOS, Linux, ..., CI/CD)
• ⭐ Supports all Hugo versions, including extended version
• ❤️ Verifies checksum & runs health check when installing
• 👀 Recognizes already downloaded binaries

How to install

You can get the hugo-installer via npm by adding it as a new devDependency to your package.json file and running npm install. Alternatively, run the following command:

npm install hugo-installer --save-dev

Requirements

• hugo-installer requires NodeJS 14 (or higher) to be installed

How to use

We recommended to use hugo-installer as part of your postinstall hook within your project's package.json file.

Configure hugo version (required)

The Hugo version can be set using the --version CLI parameter. For example:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "hugo-installer --version 0.103.0"
  }
}

Important: Make sure to use the exact version number as used in the official Hugo GitHub releases (e.g. trailing zeros that exist or do not exist)

You can also use the extended version of Hugo (for some operating systems!) by specifying the --extended CLI parameter. For example:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "hugo-installer --version 0.103.0 --extended"
  }
}

Bonus tip: The --version CLI parameter can also be an object path to some value defined in your package.json file. This allows for the Hugo version to be configured someplace else, e.g. in a otherDependencies object. For example:

{
  "otherDependencies": {
    "hugo": "0.103.0"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "hugo-installer --version otherDependencies.hugo"
  }
}

CLI parameters

The following lists all available CLI parameters and their respective default values. Only the --version CLI parameter is required.

CLI parameter	Description
--arch [arch]	System architecture that the binary will run on. It is recommended to use auto-detect by not using this option. → Default value: Auto-configured on runtime using os.arch()
--destination [path]	Path to the folder into which the binary will be put. Make sure to add this path to your .gitignore file. → Default value: bin/hugo
--downloadUrl [url]	Source base URL from where the Hugo binary will be fetched. By default, GitHub will be used. When using a custom URL, make sure to replicate GitHub release asset URLs and append a trailing slash to the custom URL. → Default value: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/
--extended	Download the extended version of Hugo. → Default value: false
--force	Force clean install of Hugo, ignoring already installed / cached binaries. → Default value: false
--httpProxy [url]	HTTP Proxy URL, used when downloading Hugo binaries. Useful when working behind corporate proxies. Can also be configured using the HTTP_PROXY environment variable, the CLI argument (if used) will take precedence.
--httpsProxy [url]	HTTPS Proxy URL, used when downloading Hugo binaries. Useful when working behind corporate proxies. Can also be configured using the HTTPS_PROXY environment variable, the CLI argument (if used) will take precedence.
--os [os]	Operating system that the binary should run on. It is recommended to use auto-detect by not using this option. → Default value: Auto-configured on runtime using os.platform()
--skipChecksumCheck	Skip checksum checks for downloaded binaries. It is recommended to leave this option enabled. → Default value: true
--skipHealthCheck	Skip health checks for downloaded binaries. It is recommended to leave this option enabled. → Default value: true
--version [version]	Hugo version to install, or path to package.json entry with the version. Make sure to use the exact version number as defined in the official Hugo GitHub releases.

You can always take a look at all available CLI parameters using the --help CLI parameter. For example:

hugo-installer --help

Environment variables

The following lists all environment variables that can be used, all of them being optional.

Environment variable	Description
HTTP_PROXY	HTTP Proxy URL, used when downloading Hugo binaries. Useful when working behind corporate proxies. Can also be configured using the --httpProxy [url] CLI argument which (if used) will also take precedence.
HTTPS_PROXY	HTTPS Proxy URL, used when downloading Hugo binaries. Useful when working behind corporate proxies. Can also be configured using the --httpsProxy [url] CLI argument which (if used) will also take precedence.

Using the Hugo binary

Once fetched, the hugo binary can be used directly from your favourite command line, as part of an npm script, from within an Node.js script or in any way you desire.

npm script

Using Hugo from within an npm script is not as simple as it seems if you care about OS compatibility (which you should). On Windows systems in particular, it is not possible to execute binary files directly from within an npm script. I developed a tiny npm module named exec-bin which allows you to do exactly that simply by prepending its command.

Add exec-bin to your devDependencies, hit npm install and run Hugo from within your npm script by prepending the exec-bin command. For instance:

exec-bin bin/hugo/hugo --config=hugo.config.json

If you only care about Linux-based systems, you can run the executable as expected without any additional tooling. For instance:

bin/hugo/hugo --config=hugo.config.json

Node.js

One might also want to integrate Hugo in a NodeJS build script, or a NodeJS-based build tool such as Gulp. You can execute the Hugo binary using the Node.JS spawn function. For example:

const path = require('path');
const spawn = require('child_process').spawn;

// Use Hugo
spawn(path.resolve(process.cwd(), 'bin', 'hugo', 'hugo'), [`--config=hugo.config.json`], {
  stdio: 'inherit',
}).on('close', () => {
  // Callback
});