# Assignment 2 Report: Static Personal Blog Website

## Introduction
This report documents the process of setting up, managing, and deploying a static personal blog website for Assignment 2. 

## Tool Selection
I chose **Sphinx** to generate the static site. Sphinx is a robust, well-established documentation generator written in Python. It natively supports reStructuredText, but with the `recommonmark` extension, it provides excellent Markdown support. I chose Sphinx because it is straightforward to set up, highly customizable, and perfectly suited for creating clean, static web pages for text-heavy content like reports and blogs.

## Setup Process
1. **Environment Preparation:** Installed the required packages using `pip install sphinx sphinx-markdown-parser recommonmark`.
2. **Initialization:** Created a `blog` directory and initialized a Sphinx project using `sphinx-quickstart`, separating the source and build directories.
3. **Configuration:** Modified `conf.py` to enable Markdown support by adding `recommonmark` to the extensions list and setting the `source_suffix` to accept `.md` files.
4. **Content Creation:** Added Markdown files including `about.md`, `assignment1_report.md` (integrating the previous assignment), and this report (`assignment2_report.md`). Updated the `index.rst` `toctree` to link them all together.
5. **Building:** Ran `make html` to generate the static HTML files into the `_build/html` directory.

## Git Management Process
The project uses Git for version control to track logical steps in development.

- **Commit 1: Initial setup of Sphinx project**
  - **Reason:** To establish the repository and save the initial file structure generated by `sphinx-quickstart`, along with a `.gitignore` to prevent tracking build artifacts.
- **Commit 2: Added Markdown support and configuration**
  - **Reason:** To save the configuration changes in `conf.py` that enable the parsing of `.md` files, a crucial requirement for the project.
- **Commit 3: Added Assignment 1 integration and homepage**
  - **Reason:** To commit the integration of the previous assignment's report and the initial home/about pages.
- **Commit 4: Added Assignment 2 documentation**
  - **Reason:** To save the project report documenting the process and tool choices.
- **Commit 5: Finalized structure and built HTML**
  - **Reason:** To mark the project as complete and ready for deployment.

## Deployment
The generated static HTML files (located in the `_build/html` directory) can be served locally using a simple HTTP server (e.g., `python -m http.server`) or hosted on platforms like GitHub Pages.