Built-in Pagination vs. jekyll-paginate-v2 for Large Datasets

Goal

Determine the optimal pagination strategy for a Jekyll site containing hundreds of entries distributed across multiple custom collections.

Constraints

The built-in jekyll-paginate feature is lightweight but limited to the posts collection and a single paginated page per site. In contrast, jekyll-paginate-v2 supports multiple paginated sections and arbitrary collections, though it introduces a runtime dependency and requires specific configuration like pagination.enabled: true. For sites exceeding 500 entries, build performance and navigation flexibility become critical factors, especially since the built-in paginator is noted for deprecation in Jekyll 4.0.

Unresolved Decision

It remains unclear which method provides the best balance of build-time efficiency and maintainability when scaling to thousands of items across diverse collections.

Specific Questions

• How does the build-time overhead of jekyll-paginate-v2 compare to the built-in paginator when processing >500 items?
• What are the specific configuration trade-offs in jekyll-paginate-v2 to prevent build slowdowns during large dataset generation?
• Does the deprecation status of the built-in paginator in Jekyll 4.0 necessitate an immediate migration to v2 for long-term compatibility?