I don’t know about you, but I love writing code that automates my work. I finally had the chance to do just that, and now I’m the proud owner of a shell script that builds and deploys my Hugo site without any extra help from me - and it even works with my git submodule setup!

In today’s post, I want to take a look at how we can keep our Hugo themes up-to-date. The key to this process is using git submodules to track and pull updates to a theme with just a few quick commands. We’ll see how to connect our theme to its remote source repo, which git commands we need to update it, and even how to safely make our own custom changes to the theme while keeping it in line with the source.

As nations isolate themselves from the rest of the world due to Covid-19, foreign nationals - workers, students, and families living as non-citizens in a foreign country - are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their lives abroad. Travel restrictions and immigration policy changes are hitting non-citizens the hardest, and without the right passport, many are being forced to travel back to their native lands. This is my story.

This blog was made with Hugo, hosted on Github Pages, and harnesses the power of git submodules to separate source code from live site data. This tutorial shows you how I got all these systems to work together nicely and how you can use these tools to take more control of your site.

At first I didn’t realize it was a mountain. All I knew was that I had ridden out past the edge of a small town to a place where the road suddenly changed. It curved back and forth, meandering upward through forested hills, becoming steeper and more narrow as I rode on. Time passed, and the shoulders of the road disappeared.

I stopped at around 7 PM that first night to search for a place to stay. With the hammock and sleeping bag stuffed deep inside my pack I had dreamed of camping in the countryside and experiencing a night under the stars in Cuba. Sadly, that dream was crushed by the sheer amount of private farmland that bordered the highway for the entire ride, and I didn’t want to get in trouble for camping on private land or government property.

As I lay on the side of the road, the afternoon sun bearing down on me and threatening to steal away my consciousness, I could hear the throaty rumble of a motor headed my way. I barely registered the rusty blue taxi that passed little more than arm’s length in front of me, leaving a cloud of lead-laden exhaust in its wake. Exhaustion spread through me like a virus, and I sat still in the silence.