Solution: GitHub Pages Build Failure Due to Error Installing json (1.8.3)

I'm not as familiar with the Ruby and Jekyll ecosystems as I'd like to be, so all I know how to do is follow a GitHub Pages help article which tells me how to set up the GH-Pages environment on my system.

Hoewver, I ran into an issue on macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 and ruby 2.5.0 from Homebrew. When I went to install the GitHub Pages gems to my local directory using bundle install, I got this error:

Installing json 1.8.3 with native extensions
Gem::Ext::BuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
...
An error occurred while installing json (1.8.3), and Bundler cannot continue.
Make sure that `gem install json -v '1.8.3'` succeeds before bundling.

Well, from this issue it seems that macOS Sierra and High Sierra with ruby v 2.4 onwards is not compatible with json 1.8.3.

I don't know exactly why this happens, but a workaround for now is to modify the Gemfile and add this line to it:

gem 'json', github: 'flori/json', branch: 'v1.8'

If you have the default GitHub Pages help article Gemfile, it will look like this after correction:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'json', github: 'flori/json', branch: 'v1.8'
gem 'github-pages', group: :jekyll_plugins

Now you can bundle install and bundle exec jekyll serve to see your site built locally again. Nice!

P.S. Can anyone tell me why the following happens? "jekyll serve" errors, but "bundle exec jekyll serve" runs everything hunky-dory.

Output:

~/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io master* 1m
❯ jekyll serve
Traceback (most recent call last):
	10: from /usr/local/bin/jekyll:23:in `<main>'
	 9: from /usr/local/bin/jekyll:23:in `load'
	 8: from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/jekyll-3.6.2/exe/jekyll:11:in `<top (required)>'
	 7: from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/jekyll-3.6.2/lib/jekyll/plugin_manager.rb:50:in `require_from_bundler'
	 6: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/bundler.rb:107:in `setup'
	 5: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/bundler/runtime.rb:26:in `setup'
	 4: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/bundler/runtime.rb:26:in `map'
	 3: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/forwardable.rb:229:in `each'
	 2: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/forwardable.rb:229:in `each'
	 1: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/bundler/runtime.rb:31:in `block in setup'
/usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.5.0/lib/ruby/2.5.0/bundler/runtime.rb:313:in `check_for_activated_spec!': You have already activated json 2.1.0, but your Gemfile requires json 1.8.6. Since json is a default gem, you can either remove your dependency on it or try updating to a newer version of bundler that supports json as a default gem. (Gem::LoadError)

~/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io master*
❯ bundle exec jekyll serve
Configuration file: /Users/jay/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io/_config.yml
       Deprecation: The 'gems' configuration option has been renamed to 'plugins'. Please update your config file accordingly.
            Source: /Users/jay/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io
       Destination: /Users/jay/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io/_site
 Incremental build: disabled. Enable with --incremental
      Generating...
   GitHub Metadata: No GitHub API authentication could be found. Some fields may be missing or have incorrect data.
                    done in 1.912 seconds.
 Auto-regeneration: enabled for '/Users/jay/dev/personal/jay-hankins.github.io'
    Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000
  Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.

P.P.S. I need recommendations on a successor to Jekyll. I'm thinking of some React or Vue static server side something something... tell me your faves!