# How do I do theme development with an example site in the repo?

**URL:** https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-do-i-do-theme-development-with-an-example-site-in-the-repo/2136
**Category:** support
**Created:** [November 23, 2015, 10:17pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-do-i-do-theme-development-with-an-example-site-in-the-repo/2136 "2015-11-23T22:17:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 10

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![AldenJole](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/aldenjole/32/907_2.png) [@AldenJole](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/AldenJole)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2015, 7:05pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-do-i-do-theme-development-with-an-example-site-in-the-repo/2136/10 "2015-11-30T19:05:03Z")

</div>

My understanding is that what I want to do is not currently possible. If I could specify the theme by path, then I could do something like

```auto
git clone git@github.com:path/to/theme.git
cd theme
hugo server --watch --themePath . --source exampleSite

```

This would allow `hugo server` to `--watch` both the theme and the example site. As it is currently I do

```auto
git clone git@github.com:path/to/site.git
cd site
mkdir themes
cd themes
git clone git@github.com:path/to/theme.git
cd ..
cd ..
hugo server --watch

```

This works okay for development but it doesn’t keep the theme and the exampleSite in the same repo which is less than ideal. I think hugo is also watching the `theme/.git` which could eventually cause problems. If I ever wanted the theme to show up on the themes page, I would have to copy the example site repo into the theme repo which would cause the example sites to get out of sync.

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-do-i-do-theme-development-with-an-example-site-in-the-repo/2136)._