CINXE.COM

<!DOCTYPE html><head><meta charset="utf-8" /><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /><title>Haunt — dthompson</title><link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom feed" href="/feed.xml" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/reset.css" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/fonts.css" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/dthompson.css" /></head><body><div class="container"><nav><ul><li><a href="/">David Thompson</a></li></ul><ul><li><a href="/about.html">About</a></li><li><a href="/index.html">Blog</a></li><li><a href="/projects.html">Projects</a></li></ul></nav><h1>Haunt</h1>Haunt is a simple, functional, hackable static site generator that gives authors the ability to treat websites as Scheme programs.<img class="centered-image" src="/images/haunt/logo.png" alt="crudely drawn ghost" />By giving authors the full expressive power of Scheme, they are able to control every aspect of the site generation process. Haunt provides a simple, functional build system that can be easily extended for this purpose.Haunt has no opinion about what markup language authors should use to write posts, though it comes with support for the popular Markdown format. Likewise, Haunt has no opinion about how authors structure their sites. Though it comes with support for building simple blogs or Atom feeds, authors should feel empowered to tweak, replace, or create builders to do things that aren't provided out-of-the-box.<h2>Usage</h2>Here's what a simple Haunt configuration looks like:<pre><code>(use-modules (haunt asset) (haunt builder blog) (haunt builder atom) (haunt builder assets) (haunt reader commonmark) (haunt site)) (site #:title "Built with Guile" #:domain "example.com" #:default-metadata '((author . "Eva Luator") (email . "eva@example.com")) #:readers (list commonmark-reader) #:builders (list (blog) (atom-feed) (atom-feeds-by-tag) (static-directory "images"))) </code></pre>In a new directory, save the above to a file named <code>haunt.scm</code>.Create subdirectories named <code>posts</code> and <code>images</code>.Add the following to a new file named <code>posts/hello.md</code>:<pre><code>title: First post! date: 2018-03-13 18:00 tags: hello summary: hello! --- Hello, world! </code></pre>Run <code>haunt build</code> to build the site.Run <code>haunt serve</code> to a launch a web server to preview your work.Open <a href="http://localhost:8080">http://localhost:8080</a> in your web browser and smile, because you've just generated your first Haunt site!Check out other sites built with Haunt over at <a href="https://awesome.haunt.page/">awesome.haunt.page</a>!<h2>Documentation</h2><a href="https://files.dthompson.us/docs/haunt/latest">View the reference manual</a><h2>Releases</h2><ul><li>2024-02-19 — 0.3.0 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.3.0.tar.gz">haunt-0.3.0.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.3.0.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2022-01-26 — 0.2.6 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.6.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.6.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.6.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2021-04-15 — 0.2.5 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.5.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.5.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.5.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2018-11-29 — 0.2.4 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.4.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.4.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.4.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2018-11-25 — 0.2.3 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.3.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.3.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.3.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2018-03-10 — 0.2.2 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.2.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.2.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.2.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2017-01-23 — 0.2.1 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.1.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.1.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.1.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2016-04-24 — 0.2 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.tar.gz">haunt-0.2.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.2.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li><li>2015-08-08 — 0.1 — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.1.tar.gz">haunt-0.1.tar.gz</a> — <a href="https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.1.tar.gz.asc">GPG signature</a></li></ul><h2>Requirements</h2><ul><li>GNU Guile >= 2.0</li><li>guile-commonmark (for Markdown support, optional)</li><li>guile-reader (for Skribe support, optional)</li></ul><h2>Installation</h2>To install Haunt with the GNU Guix package manager, run:<pre>guix install haunt</pre>To build and install Haunt from source, run:<pre>wget https://files.dthompson.us/releases/haunt/haunt-0.3.0.tar.gz tar xf haunt-0.3.0.tar.gz cd haunt-0.3.0 ./configure make make install</pre><h2>License</h2>GNU GPLv3+<h2>Git Repository</h2>Haunt is developed using the Git version control system. The official repository is hosted at <a href="https://git.dthompson.us/haunt.git">https://git.dthompson.us/haunt.git</a>.To clone the repository, run:<pre>git clone https://git.dthompson.us/haunt.git</pre><h2>Community</h2>Real-time discussion for Haunt can be found on the <code>#guile</code> channel on the <a href="https://libera.chat">Libera.chat</a> IRC network<h2>Contributing</h2>Send patches and bug reports to <a href="mailto:davet@gnu.org">davet@gnu.org</a>.<footer class="text-center">© 2025 David Thompson<a class="cc-button" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"><img src="https://licensebuttons.net/l/by-sa/4.0/80x15.png" /></a>The text and images on this site are free culture works available under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International</a> license.This website is built with <a href="https://dthompson.us/projects/haunt.html">Haunt</a>, a static site generator written in <a href="https://gnu.org/software/guile">Guile Scheme</a>.Follow me on <a rel="me" href="https://toot.cat/@dthompson">Mastodon</a>.</footer></div></body>