🕋 Generate files from templates

... for Android, BSDs, Linux, macOS, SunOS, Windows (MinGW, WSL)

Generates a text file from a template file or a folder of files from a folder of templates.

Release Version	Release Notes
	RELEASENOTES

Example

A template file could look like this:

template:

// Author: <|AUTHOR:-unknown|>
#include <stdio.h>

int  main( int argc, char *argv[])
{
   printf( "%s\n", "<|MESSAGE:-Hello World|>");
   return( 0);
}

And would be transformed by mulle-template using the contents of the environment with

MESSAGE="VfL Bochum 1848" mulle-template generate template -

into:

// Author: unknown
#include <stdio.h>

int  main( int argc, char *argv[])
{
   printf( "%s\n", "VfL Bochum 1848");
   return( 0);
}

Commands

csed

csed generates sed replacement strings from the current environment suitable for replacing file contents.

You can experiment with key delimiters other than '<|' and '>' with the --opener and --closer options.

E.g.

mulle-template --clean-env -DAUTHOR=moi \
          csed --opener '${' \
               --closer '}' \
               --no-date-environment \
               --no-boring-environment

Should produce:

-e 's/\${AUTHOR\(:-[^}]*\)\{0,1\}}/moi/g' -e 's/\${[^}]*:-\([^}]*\)}/\1/g'

Check the commands usage to see a description of the available options.

fsed

fsed generates sed replacement strings from the current environment suitable for replacing filenames. The environment variable must contain one of the uppercase words EXTENSION, DIRECTORY, FILENAME or must end with _NAME, _IDENTIFIER, _DIR, _FILE, _EXT to be considered a suitable replacement key.

You can experiment with key delimiters for the filenames with the options --filename-opener and --filename-closer.

E.g.

mulle-template --clean-env -DFILENAME=myfile fsed --filename-opener "_"

Should produce:

-e 's/_FILENAME/myfile/g'

generate

The generate command generates sed expressions with csed and fsed and applies them to the contents of a directory or to a single file.

The filenames are transformed with the fsed and the contents of each file are transformed with csed. The transformation is done using sed of course.

A template file contains regular text that is copied unchanged and keys delimited by "<|" and "|>" (e.g. <|FOO|>). These are substituted with values found in the environment variables. For unset variables you can supply a default substitution value (e.g. <|FOO:-no foo|>).

You have a few options, outside of those mentioned in the fsed and csed commands, to customize the templating operation.

--without-template-dir

Usually the template directory is copied along with the files. So the command mulle-template generate templates foo with a directory:

templates
├── file1
└── file2

will produce

foo
└── templates
    ├── file1
    └── file2

If you don't like that, you can use the option --without-template-dir.

--no-permissions

Usually mulle-template copies the permissions of the template file over to the generated file. This can be turned off with --no-permissions.

--overwrite

Usually mulle-template does not overwrite existing files. You can do so by either specifing the --overwrite option or the -f flag (which comes before the generate command)

--file

Picking out a single file. Sometimes it is convenient to just reinstall a single file from a batch of template files. In combination with --overwrite the --file option allows you to do just that.

--header-file / --footer-file

For source files it is often convenient to prepend a copyright header and other personal information. If the template has a line containing <|HEADER|> only or <|FOOTER|> only, then the contents of the files given by --header-file or --footer-file are inserted. These contents will also undergo template expansion.

Install

See mulle-sde-developer how to install mulle-sde, which will also install mulle-template with required dependencies.

The command to install only the latest mulle-template into /usr/local (with sudo) is:

curl -L 'https://github.com/mulle-sde/mulle-template/archive/latest.tar.gz' \
 | tar xfz - && cd 'mulle-template-latest' && sudo ./bin/installer /usr/local

Author

Nat! for Mulle kybernetiK