Zensical Static Site Generator

0.0.33 · active · verified Wed Apr 15

Zensical is a modern static site generator built by the creators of Material for MkDocs. It focuses on performance, extensibility, and a smooth developer experience, leveraging a Rust core. The current version is 0.0.33, with frequent releases addressing bugs and introducing new features.

Warnings

breaking The user interface update in v0.0.31, which upgraded Lucide to v1, led to the removal of 19 brand icons. Projects relying on these specific icons will need to update their configuration or choose alternative icons.
Fix: Review your project's icon usage. Consult Lucide v1 migration guides for a list of removed icons and available alternatives.
gotcha Version 0.0.26 had a regression where manylinux x86 wheels were incorrectly built for Python 3.8 instead of the required Python 3.10+, causing installation failures on affected architectures.
Fix: Ensure you are using Python 3.10 or newer and update to the latest Zensical version (>=0.0.27) to avoid this specific packaging issue. Verify your Python environment if installation fails.
gotcha When bootstrapping a new project with `zensical new` prior to v0.0.33, the generated `zensical.toml` file might not include all recommended Markdown Extensions. This could lead to a less feature-rich setup out-of-the-box.
Fix: For projects initialized before v0.0.33, manually add desired Markdown Extensions to your `zensical.toml` file or consider regenerating the config if starting a new project.
deprecated Zensical introduced a tailored fork of `mike` (v0.0.30) for managing multiple documentation versions. This is noted as a temporary solution, with native versioning support planned for future releases. The current `mike` integration may change.
Fix: Be aware that the `mike` integration might evolve. Monitor Zensical's official releases and documentation for updates on native versioning support and potential migration paths from the `mike` workflow.

Install

pip install zensical Install Zensical

Quickstart

Start a new Zensical project and serve it locally for development. This demonstrates the typical CLI-first interaction with the library.

# Zensical is primarily a command-line interface (CLI) tool.
# First, initialize a new Zensical project in the current directory:
zensical new .

# This will create a `zensical.toml` configuration file and a `docs/`
# directory with example content.

# Then, serve the site locally and watch for changes:
zensical serve

# The site will typically be available at http://127.0.0.1:8000

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