Installation

Requirements, install options and the local development loop.

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Requirements

Tool	Version	Why
Hugo	`0.146.0+`, extended	Templates, asset pipeline, Chroma
Node.js	`22.13+`	Runs the Tailwind and Pagefind binaries; pnpm 11 requires it
pnpm	`9+`	Package manager and task runner

The extended build of Hugo is required — the standard build cannot run the Tailwind CSS transform.

Install

bash

brew install hugo
npm install -g pnpm

bash

# Use the extended release from https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases
sudo snap install hugo
npm install -g pnpm

powershell

winget install Hugo.Hugo.Extended
npm install -g pnpm

Start a site

Clone the framework and install its two build dependencies:

bash

git clone https://github.com/nixentric/tartarus.git my-docs
cd my-docs
pnpm install

The development loop

bash

pnpm dev

Hugo serves the site on http://localhost:1313 and drives the whole asset pipeline itself: Tailwind compiles the stylesheet, esbuild bundles the JavaScript, and both rebuild on save. There is no second watcher to run.

Production build

bash

pnpm build

That runs Hugo with minification and fingerprinting, then builds the Pagefind index from the generated HTML. The result in public/ is ready to deploy.

Search needs a build

Pagefind indexes the output of Hugo, so search does not work under pnpm dev. Use pnpm preview to build the index and serve the built site locally.

Use it as a theme

To keep the framework separate from your content, add it as a Hugo module or a submodule under themes/ and set theme = "tartarus" in your configuration.

bash

git submodule add https://github.com/nixentric/tartarus.git themes/tartarus

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