My requirements list for a static blog generator.

requirements_static_blog_generator.md

My Requirements List for Static Blog Generator

• Markdown: Obviously I want to write my content in markdown, save it in markdown, in the state I wrote it.
• Watch and preview locally: With Jekyll, it's one command: jekyll server --watch. I like that.
• Publish with Git: One simple command to publish: git push origin master.
• Complete Control: I want full control of all javascript and css. Therefore, I want them in plain old files that I can edit, preview, and publish easily.
• Complilation: I want css, javascripts, and markdown to be compiled into deployable code. This should happen when I watch and preview. If the server does the compilation, that's cool. But I wouldn't be bothered committing the compiled resources and publishing them myself. I don't really see why the server has to do it when it's already happening locally.
• Code: It's safe to guess that I'm a developer and will probably blog some code from time to time. I want the whole shebang: backtick markdown code blocks, language hint, title, raw url, line numbers and syntax highlighting. I want it done right too. I should be able to swap out a css file for syntax highlighting. I should be able to copy the code without the line numbers. I should be able to control all the look and feel of code blocks with css. Even if I wasn't a developer, it wouldn't hurt to have this capability in there. I don't need four different, half-assed, poorly documented solutions, that require head-scratching configuration and hacks to get working right. One fully-capable one will do. The markdown and the css should be all I need to get a nice code block in there. No configuration. No plugins. No hacks. Convention over configuration please. (I also shouldn't need two programming languages installed just to do code blocks. That's lame.)
• Comments: This is more of a nice to have, but I would like comments. This is where it can get really complicated, because I want comments in markdown as well. They also need to treat code blocks with the same care as in my post content. Ideally, the comments and posts would be run through the same exact conversion process so as to ensure consistency.
• Searchability: Sure, it's a repo of plain text files. I could use any number of tools to search. But I want my visitors to be able to search without having to clone it down.

Hey, I wonder if I could just use Gists for everything?

function () {
    console.log('hello world');
}

Github Gist Requirements Satisfied:

• Markdown: Yes.
• Preview easy: Yes.
• Publish easy: Yes.
• Complete control (css, js): No. (No css or javascript.)
• Compilation: No. (No css or javascript; markdown though.)
• Code: Not quite (C-/D+). Doesn't have line numbers, titles, css customizable syntax highlighting and look and feel. But at least it looks nice and has some kind of syntax highlighting.
• Comments: Yes. And the comments are markdown. Code blocks are treated the same as the main content.
• Searchability: Sort of. I've always felt that Github's search is kind of weak. Maybe I'm not ninja enough.