Comment by brycewray
5 days ago
> Is there any static site generator where you specify the version you use, and the launcher will simply run the old binary that you want?
For Hugo, there is Hugo Version Manager (hvm)[0], a project maintained by Hugo contributor Joe Mooring. While the way it works isn't precisely what you described, it may come close enough.
I hate to say it, but even the existence of this tool is a danger sign.
I say this as someone who uses Hugo and is regularly burned (singed) by breaking changes.
Pinning your version is great until you trip across a bug (usually rendering, in my case) and need to upgrade to get rid of it. There goes a few hours. I won’t even mention the horror of needing a test suite to make sure the rendering of your old pages hasn’t changed significantly. (I ended up with large portions of text in a code block, never tracked the root cause down… probably something to do with too much indentation inside a bulleted list. It didn’t render that way several years before, though.)
You don't need a test suite. Your website is the test suite. You can build it with an old version of Hugo, build it with a new version of Hugo, and then diff the output folders: https://home.expurple.me/posts/fearless-website-updates-with...