Build Setup

This page documents how to build the course site and generate slides from source.

Prerequisites

Tool	Purpose	Install
Node.js 22+	Astro site	nodejs.org
Emacs (with ox-beamer)	Export .org → .tex	brew install emacs
TeXLive (XeLaTeX)	Compile .tex → .pdf + .rvl	tug.org/texlive
Poppler (pdftoppm)	Slide image extraction	brew install poppler
Perl + BeamerReveal	Convert .rvl → Reveal.js HTML	cpanm BeamerReveal

Local Development

Install npm dependencies once:

npm install

Generate slides into public/slides/ (required before dev or build):

bash scripts/build-slides.sh

Start the dev server:

4321/course_docs/

npm run dev

Adding or Updating Slides

1. Edit or create the .org file in slides/<topic>/
2. Re-run bash scripts/build-slides.sh
3. The dev server will pick up the new files automatically

The build script priority per topic directory:

Condition	Action
.org exists	Full pipeline: Emacs → xelatex → beamer-reveal.pl
.html exists (no .org)	Copy as-is
.rvl exists (no .html)	Run beamer-reveal.pl only

Adding a New Slide Topic

1. Create slides/<topic>/ and add the .org source file
2. Add a new MDX page at src/content/docs/slides/<topic>.mdx
3. Add an entry to the sidebar in astro.config.mjs

Deployment

Pushing to main triggers the GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yml), which installs all dependencies, runs scripts/build-slides.sh, builds the Astro site, and deploys to GitHub Pages at https://mdurrani808.github.io/course_docs/.