The website https://tails.net/ is built using Ikiwiki from source code that is available in our main Git repository, along with the rest of the Tails code.

You can build a local copy of the website on any Debian system, including Tails.

Building the website produces a set a HTML pages stored on your system that you can open in your usual web browser even while working offline. Doing so is useful for writers and designers to see how their changes will apply on the website.

  1. Clone our main Git repository:

    git clone https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails.git \
    && cd tails
    

    The source code of the website is located in the wiki/src/ folder.

  2. Configure APT so you can install a working ikiwiki

    install --owner root --group root --mode 644 \
        config/chroot_sources/tails.chroot.gpg \
        /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/tails.asc && \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ikiwiki.list <<EOF
    deb https://deb.tails.boum.org/ ikiwiki main
    EOF
    sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/ikiwiki.pref <<EOF
    Package: ikiwiki
    Pin: origin deb.tails.boum.org
    Pin-Priority: 1000
    EOF
    sudo apt update
    
  3. Install the required packages:

    sudo apt install \
       ikiwiki \
       libyaml-perl \
       libyaml-libyaml-perl \
       libyaml-syck-perl \
       perlmagick \
       po4a=0.62-1
    
  4. If you want to display the search box in the banner of your local build, uncomment the following line in ikiwiki.setup:

    # -  search
    
  5. Build the website:

    ./build-website
    

    To accelerate the build, you can disable some languages by editing the po_slave_languages parameter in the file ikiwiki.setup.

  6. You can now browse your local copy of the website in the following folder:

    config/chroot_local-includes/usr/share/doc/tails/website/