ikiwiki(1)

✨ ikiwiki(1) ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the manual for ikiwiki — a wiki compiler, and honestly? it's giving main character energy. this is the page for ikiwiki(1) and we're gonna read it together, no cap. 💖

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🌸 NAME 🌸

ikiwiki — a wiki compiler. that's it, that's the name. short, sweet, iconic. periodt. 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ikiwiki [options] source destination

ikiwiki --setup setupfile [options]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

ikiwiki is a wiki compiler. it builds static HTML pages for a wiki, from source in the ikiwiki/Markdown language (or others), and writes it out to destination. so like, it takes your markdown vibes and turns them into a whole website. slay. ✨

note that most options can be shortened to single letters, boolean flags such as --verbose can be negated with --no-verbose, and options such as --verbose can also be spelled like -verbose. so you have options, literally. 💅

👑 MODE OPTIONS 👑

these options control the mode that ikiwiki operates in. pick your fighter. 🎮

• --refresh — refresh the wiki, updating any changed pages. this is the default behavior if no other mode action is specified (but note that --setup is a mode action, and has different default behavior). so if you just run it, this is what happens. lowkey the chill default. 😌
• --rebuild — force a rebuild of all pages. everything. from scratch. it's giving factory reset. 🔥
• --setup setupfile — load options from the given setup file. if no other mode action is specified, generate wrappers and rebuild the wiki, as if --rebuild --wrappers were used. if you only want to build any changed pages, you can use --refresh with --setup.
• --changesetup setupfile — reads the setup file, adds any configuration changes specified by other options, and writes the new configuration back to the setup file. also updates any configured wrappers. in this mode, the wiki is not fully rebuilt, unless you also add --rebuild.

example, to enable some plugins:

             ikiwiki --changesetup ~/ikiwiki.setup --plugin goodstuff
            --plugin calendar

• --dumpsetup setupfile — causes ikiwiki to write to the specified setup file, dumping out its current configuration. like a little config screenshot. 📸
• --wrappers — if used with --setup --refresh, this makes it also update any configured wrappers.
• --clean — this makes ikiwiki clean up by removing any files it generated in the destination directory, as well as any configured wrappers, and the .ikiwiki state directory. this is mostly useful if you're running ikiwiki in a Makefile to build documentation and want a corresponding clean target. so satisfying, honestly. 🧹
• --cgi — enable CGI mode. in cgi mode ikiwiki runs as a cgi script, and supports editing pages, signing in, and registration.

to use ikiwiki as a CGI program you need to use --wrapper or --setup to generate a wrapper. the wrapper will generally need to run suid 6755 to the user who owns the source and destination directories. yes, 6755, not a typo, bestie. 👀

• --wrapper [file] — generate a wrapper binary that is hardcoded to do action specified by the other options, using the specified input files and destination directory. the filename to use for the wrapper is optional.

the wrapper is designed to be safely made suid and be run by untrusted users, as a post-commit hook, or as a CGI.

note that the generated wrapper will ignore all command line parameters. it said "no thoughts, head empty" to your args. 💀

• --aggregate — if the plugins/aggregate plugin is enabled, this makes ikiwiki poll configured feeds and save new posts to the srcdir.

note that to rebuild previously aggregated posts, use the --rebuild option along with this one. --rebuild will also force feeds to be polled even if they were polled recently. it's giving "i don't care if you just checked, check again." 🙈

• --render file — renders a single file, outputting the resulting html. does not save state, so this cannot be used for building whole wikis, but it is useful for previewing an edited file at the command line. generally used in conjunction with --setup to load in a wiki's setup:

             ikiwiki --setup ~/ikiwiki.setup --render foo.mdwn

• --post-commit — run in post-commit mode, the same as if called by a post-commit hook. this is probably only useful when using ikiwiki with a web server on one host and a repository on another, to allow the repository's real post-commit hook to ssh to the web server host and manually run ikiwiki to update the web site. very niche, very valid. 🫶
• --version — print ikiwiki's version number. know your version, bestie. 👑

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okay so that's the mode tea for now, but bestie we are NOT done — part 2 has the rest of the options and you're gonna wanna stay for that 💖✨

⚙️ CONFIG OPTIONS ⚙️

okay bestie, this is the part where we make the wiki yours. These options configure the wiki. Heads up tho: plugins can add additional configuration options of their own. And plot twist — all of these options and more besides can also be configured using a setup file. 💅

• --wikiname name — the name of the wiki. Default is "wiki". yes, just wiki. humble.
• --templatedir dir — point this at the directory that templates are stored in. Default is /usr/share/ikiwiki/templates, or another location as configured at build time. If the templatedir is changed, missing templates will still be searched for in the default location as a fallback. Templates can also be placed in the "templates/" subdirectory of the srcdir.

🚨 real talk: if you choose to copy and modify ikiwiki's templates, you will need to be careful to keep them up to date when upgrading to new versions of ikiwiki. Old versions of templates do not always work with new ikiwiki versions. no cap, they will simply not slay.

• --underlaydir dir — the directory that is used to underlay the source directory. Source files will be taken from here unless overridden by a file in the source directory. Default is /usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki or another location as configured at build time.
• --wrappermode mode — specify a mode to chmod the wrapper to after creating it.
• --wrappergroup group — specify what unix group the wrapper should be owned by. This can be useful if the wrapper needs to be owned by a group other than the default. For example, if a project has a repository with multiple committers with access controlled by a group, it makes sense for the ikiwiki wrappers to run setgid to that group.
• --rcs=svn|git|.., --no-rcs — enable or disable use of a revision_control_system.

The source directory will be assumed to be a working copy, or clone, or whatever the revision control system you select uses.

In CGI mode, with a revision control system enabled, pages edited via the web will be committed. 👑

No revision control is enabled by default. (bare wiki, no version history, it's giving minimalism)

• --svnrepo /svn/wiki — specify the location of the svn repository for the wiki.
• --svnpath trunk — specify the path inside your svn repository where the wiki is located. This defaults to trunk; change it if your wiki is at some other path inside the repository. If your wiki is rooted at the top of the repository, set svnpath to "".
• --rss, --norss — if rss is set, ikiwiki will default to generating RSS feeds for pages that inline a blog.
• --allowrss — if allowrss is set, and rss is not set, ikiwiki will not default to generating RSS feeds, but setting rss=yes in the inline directive can override this default and generate a feed.
• --atom, --noatom — if atom is set, ikiwiki will default to generating Atom feeds for pages that inline a blog.
• --allowatom — if allowatom is set, and rss is not set, ikiwiki will not default to generating Atom feeds, but setting atom=yes in the inline directive can override this default and generate a feed.
• --pingurl URL — set this to the URL of an XML-RPC service to ping when an RSS feed is updated. For example, to ping Technorati, use the URL http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

This parameter can be specified multiple times to specify more than one URL to ping. 📣 pinging the whole internet

• --url URL — specifies the URL to the wiki. This is a required parameter in CGI mode. don't forget it bestie, it will simply not work.
• --cgiurl http://example.org/ikiwiki.cgi — specifies the URL to the ikiwiki CGI script wrapper. Required when building the wiki for links to the cgi script to be generated.
• --historyurl URL — specifies the URL to link to for page history browsing. In the URL, [[file]] is replaced with the file to browse. It's common to use ViewVC for this.
• --adminemail you@example.org — specifies the email address that ikiwiki should use for sending email.
• --diffurl URL — specifies the URL to link to for a diff of changes to a page. In the URL, [[file]] is replaced with the file to browse, [[r1]] is the old revision of the page, and [[r2]] is the new revision. It's common to use ViewVC for this.
• --exclude regexp — specifies a rexexp of source files to exclude from processing. May be specified multiple times to add to exclude list.
• --include regexp — specifies a rexexp of source files, that would normally be excluded, but that you wish to include in processing. May be specified multiple times to add to include list. (yes, exclude then include, the plot arcs)
• --adminuser name — specifies a username of a user (or, if openid is enabled, an openid) who has the powers of a wiki admin. Currently allows locking of any page, and banning users, as well as powers granted by enabled plugins (such as [[moderating comments|plugins/moderatedcomments]] and plugins/websetup). May be specified multiple times for multiple admins. 👑

For an openid user specify the full URL of the login, including "http://".

• --plugin name — enables the use of the specified plugin in the wiki. Note that plugin names are case sensitive. Foo and foo are NOT the same girl.
• --disable-plugin name — disables use of a plugin. For example "--disable-plugin htmlscrubber" to do away with HTML sanitization.

😭 okay so disabling htmlscrubber is a choice. It says what it says. That's all I'm gonna say.

• --libdir directory — makes ikiwiki look in the specified directory first, before the regular locations when loading library files and plugins. For example, if you set libdir to "/home/you/.ikiwiki/", you can install a foo.pm plugin as "/home/you/.ikiwiki/IkiWiki/Plugin/foo.pm". ✨ your very own plugin home
• --discussion, --no-discussion — enables or disables "Discussion" links from being added to the header of every page. The links are enabled by default.
• --numbacklinks n — controls how many backlinks should be displayed at the bottom of a page. Excess backlinks will be hidden in a popup. Default is 10. Set to 0 to disable this feature.
• --userdir subdir — optionally, allows links to users of the wiki to link to pages inside a subdirectory of the wiki. The default is to link to pages in the toplevel directory of the wiki.
• --htmlext html — configures the extension used for generated html files. Default is "html".
• --timeformat format — specify how to display the time or date. The format string is passed to the strftime(3) function.
• --verbose, --no-verbose — be verbose about what is being done. tell me everything, I wanna know 🗣️
• --syslog, --no-syslog — log to syslog(3).
• --usedirs, --no-usedirs — toggle creating output files named page/index.html (default) instead of page.html.
• --prefix-directives, --no-prefix-directives — toggle new '!'-prefixed syntax for preprocessor directives. ikiwiki currently defaults to --prefix-directives.
• --w3mmode, --no-w3mmode — enable w3mmode, which allows w3m to use ikiwiki as a local CGI script, without a web server. ✨ no server needed, we're doing it locally
• --sslcookie — only send cookies over an SSL connection. This should prevent them being intercepted. If you enable this option then you must run at least the CGI portion of ikiwiki over SSL.

🔒 fr fr, read that twice. turn this on and you're committed to SSL.

• --gettime, --no-gettime — extract creation and modification times for each new page from the the revision control's log. This is done automatically when building a wiki for the first time, so you normally do not need to use this option.
• --set var=value — this allows setting an arbitrary configuration variable, the same as if it were set via a setup file. Since most commonly used options can be configured using command-line switches, you will rarely need to use this. it's the emergency exit of config options 🚪
• --set-yaml var=value — this is like --set, but it allows setting configuration variables that use complex data structures, by passing in a YAML document.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

• ikiwiki --setup my.setup

Completely (re)build the wiki using the specified setup file. the full glow-up, every page rebuilt.

• ikiwiki --setup my.setup --refresh

Refresh the wiki, using settings from my.setup, and avoid rebuilding any pages that have not changed. This is faster. ⚡ we love efficiency.

• ikiwiki --setup my.setup --refresh --wrappers

Refresh the wiki, including regenerating all wrapper programs, but do not rebuild all pages. Useful if you have changed something in the setup file that does not need a full wiki rebuild to update all pages, but that you want to immediately take effect. (the "I changed one setting and I want it NOW" special 💅)

• ikiwiki --rebuild srcdir destdir

Use srcdir as source and build HTML in destdir, without using a setup file.

• ikiwiki srcdir destdir

Use srcdir as source to update changed pages' HTML in destdir, without using a setup file.

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🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

• CC — this controls what C compiler is used to build wrappers. Default is 'cc'.
• CFLAGS — this can be used to pass options to the C compiler when building wrappers.

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• ikiwiki-mass-rebuild(8)
• ikiwiki-update-wikilist(1)
• ikiwiki-transition(1)

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Joey Hess <joey@ikiwiki.info>

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and that's the whole page bestie, we made it 🎀 this was ikiwiki(1) — the version and date live in that lil footer line at the bottom, the source is ikiwiki itself, and honestly? iconic documentation. go forth and build ur wiki. periodt 💖✨🦋