ABOUT

This document is a step-by-step guide showing how to create, compile and deploy a new gallery with ldgallery.

QUICKSTART GUIDE

Step 1: setting up the compiler

The ldgallery compiler’s job is to transform a directory containing pictures and other types of items, alongside additional metadata to associate to those, into a gallery that can be viewed in a web browser.

This compiler program is typically installed and runs on the computer of the gallery’s owner.

It can be installed through a package manager (package name “ldgallery”) or manually by extracting a prebuilt archive available on the project’s website https://ldgallery.pacien.org.

Step 2: initialising the gallery

A minimal gallery can be initialised by creating a directory containing a gallery configuration file named “gallery.yaml” with the following content:

# gallery.yaml: ldgallery example gallery configuration file.
# See ldgallery(1) for a list of available configuration keys.

galleryTile: Monuments of the World

tagCategories:
  - city

Step 3: adding items

A new item, say a picture file named “DSC0001.jpg”, can now be added to the directory created at the previous step.

Optionally, some metadata such as a title and some tags can be associated by creating a file named “DSC0001.jpg.yaml” at the same location, with the following content:

# DSC0001.jpg.yaml: ldgallery metadata sidecar file for DSC0001.jpg.
# See ldgallery(1) for a list of available keys.

title: The Eiffel Tower

tags:
  - city:Paris
  - tower

Step 4: compiling the gallery

The gallery can now be compiled by running the following command in a terminal with the right path to the gallery directory created during the previous steps:

ldgallery --with-viewer --input-dir <source gallery path>

If the compiler was installed manually through the extraction of a pre-built archive, it might be necessary to specify the full path of the installation:

<installation path>/ldgallery --with-viewer=<installation path>/viewer --input-dir <source gallery path>

Running the command above produces a directory named “out” within the input gallery directory, which contains the compiled gallery and a web viewer, ready to be deployed on some web server.

Step 5: deploying the gallery

The content of the “out” directory generated at the previous step can now simply be uploaded to some web host, for example with an FTP client like FileZilla or through rsync/SSH with the following command:

rsync -Prz <source gallery path>/out/* user@webhost:publication_path/

The target web host doesn’t need to run any additional software besides a web server correctly configured to serve flat static files.

TIPS

Version control

Some standard version-control software such as Git or Mercurial can easily be used to keep track of the evolutions of the gallery directory, thanks to the text-based format used for the sidecar metadata files.

Automated compilation and deployment

The compilation and upload commands can be combined in a Makefile or made part of a script for faster and more convenient deployments.

Such scripted procedure can then further be automated through Continuous Integration hooks.

SEE ALSO

Related manual pages: ldgallery(1), ldgallery-viewer(7)

The ldgallery source code is available on https://ldgallery.pacien.org.

LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2019-2020 Pacien TRAN-GIRARD and Guillaume FOUET.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html.