RIP Jekyll (The Genesis of the Jamstack) | Bridgetown

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2021-09-13 17:30:05

“I can tell you there’s no secret plan to revive Jekyll from the dead.” (source) “Jekyll is in frozen mode and permanent hiatus. RIP Jekyll 2009-2018.” (source) “Good luck to Jared White to build a modern SSG for the Ruby community.”

Those comments were posted in May 2021 by Frank Taillandier in The New Dynamic Slack chat. (Please follow the above source links for additional details.) They’re unfortunately no longer in the Slack archive due to history limits, so those screenshots which I took at the time may very well be the only proof of this information. If they sound shocking to you, they should!

But let me back up a moment. I adored Jekyll. I loved it ever since I first discovered it—and the brave new world of static site generators—in 2016. As a refugee from the wild reaches of PHP & WordPress, I pivoted my own web studio, Whitefusion, to build Jekyll (and Rails) solutions for clients. I watched firsthand the rise of Netlify and the Jamstack. I cheered Jekyll on from the bleachers and wanted nothing but the best of success for the project…until it became clear to me in early 2020 that there were serious concerns to be had about the future viability of Jekyll. Those concerns led me to fork Jekyll and create Bridgetown.

Back to the topic at hand…immediately after Frank posted the above comments, I attempted—repeatedly—to reach out to him in order for us personally to issue a joint public statement as to the nature of Jekyll’s frozen status (and the implication that Bridgetown seemingly had become heir apparent to Jekyll), but to no avail. I can only speculate why he would feel free to communicate with me in The New Dynamic’s Slack about Jekyll’s frozen status—and wish me luck in building Bridgetown (!)—yet refrain from making any public statement to that effect.