Using YAML and Images from a single directory in Jekyll

Question

I have a Jekyll-based and Github-pages-hosted site. I also have a Git Submodule that contains both YAML files and images. I would like to use it within my GitHub pages Jekyll project but I’m not sure how.

Here's example directory structure:

/assets/
/_data/
/MyGitSubmodule/yaml/
/MyGitSubmodule/images/

I’m used to putting YAML files in _data and images in /assets/. Is there a way to configure Jekyll also parse YAML files in another directory? Or copy static files from somewhere in _data during the build step? Or set up symlinks? That work with GitHub Pages?

I've tried:

• Changing the data_dir setting to be the same as my /assets/ directory but I don't want to make my data files publicly accessible.
• Creating a symbolic link on Windows with mklink /D but I get an error on servingC:/Ruby26-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/jekyll-4.2.2/lib/jekyll/utils.rb:141:in initialize': Is a directory @ rb_sysopen - C:/Ben/personalsite2/assets/unreal/specifiers (Errno::EISDIR)`. Also ]this page seems to imply that they work on GitHub pages](https://github.com/chetabahana/symlink) but other docs for Jekyll seem to say that they are disabled in “safe mode” and GitHub pages.

Answer 1

Eh in the end I solved this by putting my data_dir inside /assets/ and by by using the exclude setting in config.yml to stop it from serving some of the yml files