ops-class.org Website Sources

ops-class.org is a website intended to let students learn operating system concepts online at their own pace. It includes lecture slides and assignments that use the OS/161 instructional operating system.

Install

You’ll need node and npm, the node package manager. I suggest installing nvm, the node version manager. Once you have those npm install in this directory will install Metalsmith and the build pipeline dependencies.

Build Process

• make will do a quick build of the site without link, format, or spell checking, and without minifying JavaScript or CSS files.

• make check will build and run the link, format, and spell checker.

• make deploy will run the link, format, and spell checker, minify all JavaScript and CSS files for deployment, and beautify the HTML.

TODOs and Possible Improvements

Integrate Google PageSpeed

It would be great if all of the page’s Google PageSpeed scores were checked during the make check build. An npm package already exists providing the PageSpeed API but it would need to be packaged for Metalsmith and integrated sensibly into the build process. (One idea is to print the N pages with the lowest speed or accessibility scores.)

This could be contributed back to the Metalsmith community when finished.

Internalize External Images

One of the problems PageSpeed has identified with the current ops-class.org website is that images linked off the site are not cached properly. An approach to fixing this is to identify all external images, download them, and rewrite the links to use the "internalized" versions. This would allow us to set sensible caching policies and utilize the PageSpeed module’s support for automatic image compression and sizing. It would also fix broken images caused by link rot.

This could also be contributed back to the Metalsmith community when finished.