Yeah I don't use Jekyll (I use Hugo, although have been looking for a rust option that has a smaller binary), and I rebuild my static site often enough.
But a Python venv and a requirements lockfile can alleviate a lot of the issues you seemed to have.
Seems like placing the generator directly in the repo is a little bit of an overreaction. Maybe it is all you have time/patience for, but I would not consider it a clean practice. (E.g. it would break when you switch CPU architectures, which I have done since I started my site).
I hadn't thought of CPU architecture problems since all of my computers in the past decade or so have used the same architecture, but that's a good point.
I understand sticking the generator in the repo isn't a good practice, but I really just want a simple setup that won't have dependency problems. Probably an executable shell or Python file that doesn't draw in any dependencies would be ideal for me since those can run on pretty much any Linux computer in my experience.
Based off the recommendations here, I'll likely migrate my Jekyll site to Hugo or this one which was recommended by another commenter in the thread: https://rgz.ee/ssg.html
Right now, do you just keep Hugo in your `$PATH`? If you do that, do you need to note in your site's README which version of Hugo it should be built with, or are Hugo versions pretty backwards-compatible with each other?
Hugo is packaged in my distro and I just roll with the updates. Never had an issue before, but it has only been a year so maybe that is not representative of long term usage.
But a Python venv and a requirements lockfile can alleviate a lot of the issues you seemed to have.
Seems like placing the generator directly in the repo is a little bit of an overreaction. Maybe it is all you have time/patience for, but I would not consider it a clean practice. (E.g. it would break when you switch CPU architectures, which I have done since I started my site).