angular-cli-ghpages

Deploy your Angular app to GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages or any other Git repo directly from the Angular CLI! 🚀

Table of contents:

1. 📖 Changelog
2. ⚠️ Prerequisites
3. 🚀 Quick Start (local development)
4. ⚙️ Installation
5. 🚀 Continuous Delivery
6. 📦 Deployment Options
   • --base-href
   • --build-target
   • --no-build
   • --repo
   • --message
   • --branch
   • --name & --email
   • --no-dotfiles
   • --no-notfound
   • --no-nojekyll
   • --cname
   • --add
   • --dry-run
7. 📁 Configuration File
8. 🌍 Environments
9. ⁉️ FAQ

📖 Changelog

A detailed changelog is available in the releases section.

⚠️ BREAKING CHANGE (v2)

The internal build of Angular has changed with Angular 17. Unfortunately, there are now a lot of different build targets and builders. We will try to guess the correct build target, based on the usual conventions to name them. The conventions are shown below, try to specify the build target more and more explicitly until the project compiles.

In the following example, your app is called test and you want to deploy the production build.

ng deploy

If this doesn't work, try this:

ng deploy --build-target=test

If this doesn't work, try this:

ng deploy --build-target=test:build:production

You can also and modify your angular.json to archive the same:

{
  "deploy": {
    "builder": "angular-cli-ghpages:deploy",
    "options": {
      "buildTarget": "test:build:production"
    }
  }
}

For your convenience, you can also use prerenderTarget (which adds the suffix :prerender:production). There is no support for universalBuildTarget or serverTarget because GitHub Pages only supports static assets and no Server-Side Rendering!

We will then try to deploy the dist/test/browser folder to GitHub Pages. If this is not the folder that you want to serve, you should explicitly specify the directory with the --dir option:

ng deploy --dir=dist/test/browser

This new build logic is a breaking change, therefore angular-cli-ghpages v2 only supports Angular 17 and higher. For previous versions of Angular, use angular-cli-ghpages v1.x.

⚠️ Prerequisites

This command has the following prerequisites:

• Git 1.9 or higher (execute git --version to check your version)
• Angular project created via Angular CLI v17 or greater
• older Angular projects can still use a v1.x version or use the standalone program. See the documentation at README_standalone.

🚀 Quick Start (local development)

This quick start assumes that you are starting from scratch. If you already have an existing Angular project on GitHub, skip step 1 and 2.

1. Install the latest version of the Angular CLI globally and create a new Angular project.

   npm install -g @angular/cli
   ng new your-angular-project --defaults
   cd your-angular-project
   

2. By default, the Angular CLI initializes a Git repository for you.
   To add a new remote for GitHub, use the git remote add command:

   git remote add origin https://github.com/<username>/<repositoryname>.git
   

   Hints:

   • Create a new empty GitHub repository first.
   • Replace <username> and <repositoryname> with your username from GitHub and the name of your new repository.
   • Please enter the URL https://github.com/<username>/<repositoryname>.git into your browser – you should see your existing repository on GitHub.
   • Please double-check that you have the necessary rights to make changes to the given project!

3. Add angular-cli-ghpages to your project. For details, see the installation section.

   ng add angular-cli-ghpages
   

4. Deploy your project to GitHub pages with all default settings. Your project will be automatically built in production mode.

   ng deploy --base-href=/<repositoryname>/
   

   Which is the same as:

   ng deploy your-angular-project --base-href=/<repositoryname>/
   

   Please be aware of the --base-href option. It is necessary when your project will be deployed to a non-root folder. See more details below.

5. Your project should be available at https://<username>.github.io/<repositoryname>.
   Learn more about GitHub pages on the official website.

⚙️ Installation

angular-cli-ghpages can be installed via ng add. This will install the NPM package and add the necessary deploy configuration to your angular.json file.

ng add angular-cli-ghpages

If you have multiple projects in one workspace, you should manually define the project name:

ng add angular-cli-ghpages --project MYPROJECTNAME

🚀 Continuous Delivery

If you run this command from a CI/CD environment, the deployment will most likely not work out of the box. For security reasons, those environments usually have read-only privileges, or you haven't set up Git correctly. Therefore, you should take a look at "personal access tokens" GH_TOKEN (which works everywhere) and the "installation access token" GITHUB_TOKEN (which is exclusively provided by GitHub actions). In short: a token replaces username and password and is a safer choice because a token can be revoked at any time.

All you need to do is to set an environment variable called GH_TOKEN (or PERSONAL_TOKEN) in your CI/CD environment. For GitHub Actions, you can also use the GITHUB_TOKEN which provides more security and requires no additional setup. All the tokens only work if the remote repository uses the HTTPS scheme. Tokens are generally not supported for Git over SSH.

If the current working directory is already a git repository, you don't need to specify the repository again. The current remote repository with the name origin will be used in this case. You can also override the repository setting using the --repo option.

If you specify all the three options (--repo, --name and --email), then angular-cli-ghpages will also work in directories that are not under version control at all.

ng deploy --repo=https://github.com/<username>/<repositoryname>.git --name="Your Git Username" [email protected]

(replace <username> and <repositoryname> with your username from GitHub and the name of your repository)

ℹ️ Note for GitHub Actions

The GITHUB_TOKEN (installation access token) will only trigger a release of a new website if the action runs in a private repository. In a public repo, a commit is generated, but the site does not change. See this GitHub Community post for more info. If your repo is public, you must still use the GH_TOKEN (personal access token).

📦 Deployment Options

--base-href

• optional
• Default: undefined (string)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – The tag <base href="/"> remains unchanged in your index.html
  • ng deploy --base-href=/the-repositoryname/ – The tag <base href="/the-repositoryname/"> is added to your index.html

Specify the base URL for the application being built. Same as ng build --base-href=/XXX/

ℹ️ Please read the next lines carefully, or you will get 404 errors in case of a wrong configuration!

A) You don't want to use a custom domain

If you don't want to use an own domain, then your later URL of your hosted Angular project should look like this: https://your-username.github.io/the-repositoryname. In this case you have to adjust the --base-href accordingly:

ng deploy --base-href=/the-repositoryname/

B) You want to use a custom domain

If you want to use your own domain, then you don't have to adjust --base-href. However, it is now necessary to set the --cname parameter!

ng deploy --cname=example.org

See the option --cname for more information!

--build-target

• optional
• Default: undefined (string)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – Angular project is built in production mode
  • ng deploy --build-target=test – Angular project is using the build configuration test (this configuration must exist in the angular.json file)

If no buildTarget is set, the production build of the default project will be chosen. The buildTarget simply points to an existing build configuration for your project, as specified in the configurations section of angular.json. Most projects have a default configuration and a production configuration (commonly activated by using the --prod flag) but it is possible to specify as many build configurations as needed.

This is equivalent to calling the command ng build --configuration=XXX. This command has no effect if the option --no-build is active.

⚠️ BREAKING CHANGE (v1)

This option was called --configuration in previous versions.

BEFORE (does not work):

ng deploy --configuration=test

NOW:

ng deploy --build-target=test

--no-build

• optional
• Default: false (string)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – Angular project is build in production mode before the deployment
  • ng deploy --no-build – Angular project is NOT build

Skip the build process during deployment. This can be used when you are sure that you haven't changed anything and want to deploy with the latest artifact. This command causes the --build-target setting to have no effect.

--repo

• optional
• Default: URL of the origin remote of the current dir (assumes a Git repository)
• Example: ng deploy --repo=https://github.com/<username>/<repositoryname>.git

This specifies the target repository. If none is given as an option, the repository is discovered from the current working directory.

By default, this command assumes that the current working directory is a Git repository, and that you want to push changes to the origin remote. If instead, your files are not in a git repository, or if you want to push to another repository, you can provide the repository URL in the repo option.

ℹ️ Hint

Set an environment variable with the name GH_TOKEN / PERSONAL_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN and it will be automatically added to the URL, if it uses the HTTPS shema (it must start with https://github.com). Tokens are generally not supported for Git over SSH (starts with [email protected]).

Learn more about "personal access tokens" here (GH_TOKEN) and about the "installation access token" here (GITHUB_TOKEN). PERSONAL_TOKEN is an alias for GH_TOKEN.

--message

• optional
• Default: Auto-generated commit (string)
• Example: ng deploy --message="What could possibly go wrong?"

The commit message must be wrapped in quotes if there are any spaces in the text.
Some additional text is always added to the message, if the command runs on Travis CI, Circle CI or GitHub Actions.

--branch

• optional
• Default: gh-pages (string)
• Example: ng deploy --branch=master

The name of the branch you'll be pushing to. The default uses GitHub's gh-pages branch, but this can be configured to push to any branch on any remote. You have to change this to master if you are pushing to a GitHub organization page (instead of a GitHub user page).

--name & --email

• optional
• Default: value of git config user.name and git config user.email
• Example: ng deploy --name="Displayed Username" [email protected]

If you run the command in a repository without user.name or user.email Git config properties (or on a machine without these global config properties), you must provide user info before Git allows you to commit. In this case, provide both name and email string values to identify the committer.

--no-dotfiles

• optional
• Default: Dotfiles are created (boolean true)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – Dotfiles are included by default.
  • ng deploy --no-dotfiles – Dotfiles are ignored.

The command includes dotfiles by default (e.g. .htaccess will be committed). With --no-dotfiles files starting with . are ignored.

--no-notfound

• optional
• Default: 404.html file is created (boolean true)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – A 404.html file is created by default.
  • ng deploy --no-notfound – No 404.html file is created.

By default, a 404.html file is created, because this is the only known workaround to avoid 404 error messages on GitHub Pages. For Cloudflare Pages we highly recommend to disable the 404.html file by setting this switch to true! See #178

--no-nojekyll

• optional
• Default: .nojekyll file is created (boolean true)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – A .nojekyll file is created by default.
  • ng deploy --no-nojekyll – No .nojekyll file is created.

By default, a .nojekyll file is created, because we assume you don't want to compile the build again with Jekyll.

Explanation: By creating such a file in the root of your pages repo, you will bypass the Jekyll static site generator on GitHub Pages. Static content is still delivered – even without Jekyll. But now the deployment will be a bit faster. This is also necessary if your site uses files or directories that start with _underscores since Jekyll considers these to be special resources and does not copy them to the final site. The same applies to .txt files in your assets folder: They will just disappear if Jekyll processes the build. see #160

--cname

• optional
• Default: undefined (string) – No CNAME file is generated
• Example:
  • ng deploy --cname=example.com

A CNAME file will be created enabling you to use a custom domain. More information on GitHub Pages using a custom domain.

--add

• optional
• Default: false (boolean) – The existing files will be removed from the branch you'll be pushing to as expected.
• Example:
  • ng deploy --add=true

If is set to true, it will only add, and never remove existing files. By default, existing files in the target branch are removed before adding the ones. More information.

--dir

• optional
• Default: undefined (string) – Conventions will be used to guess the correct directory in your dist folder.
• Example:
  • ng deploy --dir=dist/completely-different-folder/en

Overrides the directory for all published sources, relative to the current working directory.

--dry-run

• optional
• Default: false (boolean)
• Example:
  • ng deploy – Normal behavior: Changes are applied.
  • ng deploy --dry-run – No changes are applied at all.

Run through without making any changes. This can be very useful because it outputs what would happen without doing anything.

📁 Configuration File

To avoid all these command-line cmd options, you can write down your configuration in the angular.json file in the options attribute of your deploy project's architect. Just change the kebab-case to lower camel case. This is the notation of all options in lower camel case:

• baseHref
• buildTarget
• noBuild
• repo
• message
• branch
• name
• email
• noDotfiles
• noNotfound
• noNojekyll
• cname
• dir
• dryRun

A list of all available options is also available here.

Example:

ng deploy --base-href=https://angular-schule.github.io/angular-cli-ghpages/ --name="Angular Schule Team" [email protected]

becomes

"deploy": {
  "builder": "angular-cli-ghpages:deploy",
  "options": {
    "baseHref": "https://angular-schule.github.io/angular-cli-ghpages/",
    "name": "Angular Schule Team",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  }
}

Now you can just run ng deploy without all the options in the command line! 😄

ℹ️ Hint

You can always use the --dry-run option to verify if your configuration is right. The project will build but not deploy.

🌍 Environments

We have seen angular-cli-ghpages running on various environments, like Travis CI, CircleCi or GitHub Actions. Please share your knowledge by writing an article about how to set up the deployment.

1. GitHub Actions
2. Travis CI
3. CircleCI

⁉️ FAQ

Before posting any issue, please read the FAQ first. See the contributors documentation at README_contributors if you want to debug and test this project.

License

Code released under the MIT license.

© 2017-2024 https://angular.schule

This project is made on top of tschaub/gh-pages.
Thank you very much for this great foundation!