The problem

Pelican runs, but doesn't generate or process any articles and pages:

Done: Processed 0 articles, 0 drafts, 0 pages, 
0 hidden pages and 0 draft pages in 0.12 seconds.

This is likely due to a missing dependency. If the articles are in markdown , pelican can not generate articles without the markdown dependency.

A solution

The dependencies specific to your Pelican project need to be installed separately. The general dependencies are included in the Pelican installation process.

If this problem occurred suddenly on an existing installation, your Python version may have been upgraded, and you may need to re-install the Python dependencies your Pelican project needs.

Examples of dependencies that are not automatically installed with Pelican itself are the markdown dependency. For example, this is one way that we can install the markdown dependency: pip3 install markdown

pip is the Python package installer . There are installation instructions linked on that page.

Background

This problem can suddenly occur if you have (accidentally) changed which Python version you are using. For example, the brew package manager for macOS does automatic updates by default. Unfortunately it does not properly handle package updates. Although it will update your Python version without asking or clearly informing you, it will not take the logical next step and make your current Python packages available to the new Python version. As a result, any scripts or executables may now fail without clear indication as to what happened.

This type of environment problem can be avoided by using a virtual environment with virtualenv or pyvenv .