semo

README

Semo

Semo is a generic scaffolding/templating tool. Build a template for your favourite project structure and use Semo to instantiate new copies of it with a single command.

You can also place templates at the root of a project to easily extend it and make it easy to have a consistent file structure. For example, run

$ semo new_controller MyControllerName

and a new controller class will be created in the right directory of your project.

How to install

The easiest way is to first install go and then run

$ go get github.com/faaxm/semo/cmd/semo
$ go install github.com/faaxm/semo/cmd/semo

Semo will then be downloaded and installed into your go-workspace, which is usually in your user directory at ~/go.

Place your template files either in your user directory at ~/.semo/templates or in your project's root folder in semo_templates.

First Steps

Semo finds templates by converting their name to a path. For example the template cpp.class can be found in semo_templates in the subdirectory cpp/class.

To create a new c++ class, consisting of a header and a cpp-file, go to the root directory of the repository (or any subdirectory) and type

$ semo cpp.class MyClass

Semo will then create a MyClass.cpp and MyClass.h file.

Creating your own templates

The simplest template in Semo is just a directory with the templates name. Inside that root directory, there has to be a _template_files directory containing the files and directories that will be copied when the template is instantiated.

A very simple template for a c header file could look like this:

header
└── _template_files
    └── {{ .arg_0 }}.h

Notice the name of the template header file contains {{ .arg_0 }}. This part will be replaced with the first argument given to Semo when invoked on the command line. To create a header with the name "TestHeader", you would call Semo like this:

$ semo header TestHeader

The same placeholders ({{ .arg_0 }}, {{ .arg_1 }}, ..., {{ .arg_N }}) can be used inside the template header file.

For more information on how these placeholders work, have a look at the text/template package from go: https://golang.org/pkg/text/template/

More advanced templates

If you don't want to use the standard .arg_N placeholders, you can define your own field names together with default values. To do this, create a config.yml file inside the root directory of your template.

This file contains a fields entry with a list of the required fields. Each field has to have a name, but can also have a description and a default value. Have a look at the "cpp.class" template for an example.

Values for each field can still be given on the command line in the order in which they are defined in the config.yml file. However, you can now also call semo without providing any arguments other than the template name, like

$ semo cpp.class

In that case, Semo will query the user interactively for the data, with the option of using the default value.

Functions

Semo provides several functions to alter the input field values:

• {{ toUpper .arg_0 }}: Convert all characters of .arg_0 to upper case.
• {{ toLower .arg_0 }}: Convert all characters of .arg_0 to lower case.
• {{ noWhitespace .arg_0 }}: Remove all whitespace from .arg_0 and replace it with underscores.
• {{ runID N }}: Returns a unique ID of maximum length N. This ID is generated once when Semo is launched and will stay the same for all files in the template.

Additional functions are provided by the test/template package of go. You can also concatenate function calls like this: {{ toUpper (runID 5) }}.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GPL version 3.0 license. See LICENSE.txt for more information.