RSEc website

This repository contains the source of the ELIXIR Research Software Ecosystem (RSEc) website. The site introduces the ecosystem, its metadata sources and applications, and provides documentation, governance information and community contacts.

How the site is organised

The site is built with Jekyll and the ELIXIR Toolkit Theme configured in _config.yml.

• Root-level Markdown files contain the website pages, such as index.md, sources.md, applications.md and docs.md.
• _data/ contains navigation and structured content. Edit _data/topnav.yml to update the main navigation.
• _includes/ contains local template fragments.
• _sass/ contains styling, including the website-specific rules in _sass/custom_classes.scss.
• assets/ contains stylesheets, logos and icons.
• bin/update-logo.sh regenerates the favicons and app icons.
• .github/workflows/jekyll.yml builds and deploys the site to GitHub Pages.

Preview locally

Use Ruby 3.3, matching the deployment workflow, with Bundler installed. From the repository root:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Open the local address printed by Jekyll, normally http://127.0.0.1:4000. Jekyll downloads the remote theme during the build, so network access is required. Restart the preview after changing _config.yml.

Pages containing Mermaid diagrams also require Node.js and the Mermaid CLI (mmdc), which the deployment workflow installs with:

npm install -g @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli

To check the site without starting a server:

bundle exec jekyll build

Generated files are written to _site/, which is ignored by Git.

Logos and icons

The canonical artwork lives in the RSEc graphics repository. The website uses local SVG copies: assets/img/logo-rsec-full.svg for the full logo and assets/img/logo-rsec.svg for the logomark. The README header uses the light and dark variants from the graphics repository.

After updating the local logomark, regenerate the favicon, Apple touch icon, Android icons, Windows tile and Safari pinned-tab icon:

bash bin/update-logo.sh

The script requires rsvg-convert (librsvg) and ImageMagick's convert command. Review and commit the updated source SVGs and generated assets together. The Safari icon is generated as a black silhouette; the other icons retain the logo colours.

Deployment

Pushes to main trigger the GitHub Pages workflow, which can also be started manually. In addition to building the site, it downloads the latest metadata-commons-datasets artifact from GHCR and adds the archive to the published website. This archive-download step runs in GitHub Actions, not during a local Jekyll preview.

Contributing

For website changes, edit the relevant page, data file or stylesheet and check the local preview before opening a pull request against main. Include regenerated icons when changing the logomark. Keep generated _site/ files out of commits.

Acknowledgements

The ELIXIR RSEc is supported and coordinated by ELIXIR Europe.