Unable to serve/build with a site config file from another directory

[tlylt]

Tell us about your environment
Windows 10

• MarkBind Version:
  latest master branch

What did you do? Please include the actual source code causing the issue.
Steps to reproduce:

1. create a new site in /docs by markbind init docs
2. copy the default site.json and put it in a new folder custom within /docs, e.g. file is /docs/custom/site2.json
3. try to serve the site with the new site config, within the docs directory

I am in C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs>
I tried: markbind serve -s ./custom/site2.json

error: Failed to read the site config file './custom/site2.json' atC:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom:
C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom\custom\site2.json: ENOENT: no such file or directory,
open 'C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom\custom\site2.json'
Please ensure the file exist or is valid

markbind serve -s custom/site2.json

error: Failed to read the site config file 'custom/site2.json' atC:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom:
C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom\custom\site2.json: ENOENT: no such file or directory,
open 'C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom\custom\site2.json'
Please ensure the file exist or is valid

markbind serve -s site2.json

error: No config file found in parent directories of C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs
error: uncaughtException: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined date=Sun Mar 13
2022 10:16:32 GMT+0800 (Singapore Standard Time), pid=3528, uid=null, gid=null, cwd=C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs, execPath=C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe, version=v14.15.1, argv=[C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe, C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\markbind-cli\index.js, serve, -s, site2.json], rss=79585280, heapTotal=63401984, heapUsed=37812224, external=1890620, arrayBuffers=367242, loadavg=[0, 0, 0], uptime=132146

markbind serve -s /custom/site2.json

error: No config file found in parent directories of C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs
error: uncaughtException: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined date=Sun Mar 13
2022 10:18:40 GMT+0800 (Singapore Standard Time), pid=9180, uid=null, gid=null, cwd=C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs, execPath=C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe, version=v14.15.1, argv=[C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe, C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\markbind-cli\index.js, serve, -s, /custom/site2.json], rss=79994880, heapTotal=63664128, heapUsed=38139656, external=1915359, arrayBuffers=391981, loadavg=[0, 0, 0], uptime=132275

What did you expect to happen?
Be able to serve from a site-config file from another folder

What actually happened? Please include the actual, raw output.
Errors as above.

[jonahtanjz]

Thanks @tlylt for bringing this up!

Seems like the issue is with the cliUtil.findRootFolder used in the serve method. Within the findRootFolder method, if the userSpecifiedRoot is empty, the method will return the directory name of the site config, in this case C:\Users\User\Documents\GitHub\test-md\docs\custom, which will then set this as the root folder in the serve method. This will cause Site object to try to find the config file at ./custom/custom/site2.json.

[jovyntls]

I notice that Site.collectBaseUrl is filtering for paths that end with the siteConfigPath too. This might be giving the wrong baseUrl for the site, since it would return the filepath of the parent directory of the config file (e.g. custom/ in custom/site2.json) instead of the root path of the site (e.g. docs/).

[tlylt]

Also, I think would be good if we can provide some examples on how to specify both the root and the site.json file (does this need to be relative or not?)

If I am at the root, outside of /docs
Should I do markbind serve ./docs -s ./docs/custom/site2.json or markbind serve ./docs -s ./custom/site2.json ? Both not working at the moment.

[jovyntls]

The former (markbind serve ./docs -s ./docs/custom/site2.json) feels more intuitive to me, with both being defined relative to the present working directory.

[tlylt]

Two additional points for consideration:

• If I can do markbind serve -s site.json, I should probably be able to do markbind serve -s ./site.json, which is not the case
• If I do make the above alternative run (with ./site,json), Even though there are more than one errors and a warning in the console, the serve command does not exit and still attempts to serve the files, which are not working because of the errors. Should we exit the serve/build when there are errors?