This repo contains the contents of http://help.mcneel.com
The site is hosted on GitHub Pages which uses a static site generator called Jekyll.
These instructions cover running this project locally on both Mac OS X and Windows so that you can preview changes before pushing them to GitHub Pages.
First, navigate somewhere safe and clone the repository.
git clone https://github.com/mcneel/help-docs.git
If you are not comfortable using git on the command-line, then try GitHub for Mac and GitHub for Windows. There's also the git cheat sheet.
Notice that 'gh-pages' is the only branch. Everything committed to this branch is automatically published when pushed to GitHub.
Mac OS X Yosemite ships with Ruby and RubyGems, however it's not wise to mess around with this installation. Instead, install your own Ruby using Homebrew.
As per the Homebrew website, install via the following one-liner (which will prompt you to install the Xcode Command Line Tools, if you don't already have them).
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Then we can brew Ruby.
brew install ruby
Now close and reopen the Terminal window to make sure the system knows about the new version of Ruby.
The GitHub Pages Ruby Gem provides the same version of Jekyll as exists on the GitHub Pages servers. This ensures we aren't accidentally using features that have either been deprecated or simply don't exist yet!
gem install github-pages
You can now serve your local copy of this site by running the following commands, remembering to replace CLONE_DIRECTORY with the location to which you checked out this repository.
cd CLONE_DIRECTORY
jekyll serve
Navigate to http://localhost:4000 in your browser to view the site.
While Jekyll is not officially supported in Windows, it does work. These instructions are based on the official unofficial guide to installing Jekyll on Windows.
Go to http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ and download the installer for Ruby 2.1.X that matches your system architecture (x86/x64).
At the "Installation Destination and Optional Tasks" dialog, make sure to check the "Add Ruby executable to your PATH" box.
Then, from the same page download the Development Kit that corresponds to your Ruby installation. Jekyll won't be fully functional without this.
Run the self extracting archive, entering the path C:\RubyDevKit when prompted.
To initialise and install the DevKit, open up a command prompt and roll up your sleeves...
cd C:\RubyDevKit
ruby dk.rb init
ruby dk.rb install
As with OS X, install the GitHub Pages Ruby Gem, navigate to the clone directory and run jekyll.
gem install github-pages
cd CLONE_DIRECTORY
jekyll serve