Is there an easy way to make Jekyll output files to a docs/ directory?

Question

I'm using Jekyll to build a Github pages site, and have run into a sort of silly issue.

Github recommends Jekyll for Github pages, so I sort of assumed it would just work; however, it does not.

Jekyll by default builds all files to the _site/ directory, which is really nice and looks fancy and so on, but is not an option for Github pages.

Github seems to offer only three options for hosting:

1. Root of master Branch
2. docs/ Folder of Master Branch
3. gh-pages Branch

So, pray tell, why can I not build Jekyll to either A. a branch with a custom name or B. a folder named docs/ instead of _site?

Answer 1

Turns out I didn't read enough docs.

The solution is to add a tag to the _config.yaml file in the root of the project.

This line will switch from using _site to docs/ for build output:

destination: docs/

Alternately, you can pass this as an environmental variable like so:

jekyll build --destination docs/