Generating a list of pages (not posts) in a given category

Question

I am using Jekyll as a static generator for a website (not a blog), and I want to have an automatically generated list of all pages on my index page. Specifically, I want to

Answer 1

There are some variations/ simplifications possible (answer of felipesk). Maybe due to improvements in Jekyll.

There is NO index needed in _config.yml.

If the list of pages are not listed in a page but for example in a doc, you can add the category also to the doc:

---
layout: doc
title: Fruit List
categories: [fruit]
---

And then use it like this:

{% for p in site.pages %}
   {% if p.categories contains page.category %}
     * [{{ p.title }}]({{ p.url | absolute_url }})
        {{ p.excerpt }}
   {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

With posts this can even be shorter:

{% for post in site.categories[page.category] %}
  * [{{ post.title }}]({{ post.url | absolute_url }})  
      {{ post.excerpt }}
{% endfor %}

Why this only works for posts, I could not figure out yet.

The interesting point is that this snippet can be used everywhere (if you mix docs/pages/posts)! So just add it as an _includes and use it like:

## Further Reading
{% include pages-list.md %}

I work with the theme Minimal Mistakes