What generic template processor should I use?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

This is a potentially dangerous question because interdisciplinary questions and answers will be biased, but I'll have a stab at it anyway. All in good spirit!

So, here we go. I'm writing a major editing mode for Emacs for the language that it has almost no support for yet. And I'm at the point, where I have to decide on a way to generate project files. Below is the syllabus of the task ahead:

• The templates have to represent project directory tree, not only single files.

• The resulting files are of various formats, potentially including SGML-like languages, but not limited to this variety. They also have to generate C-like source code and, eLisp source code and plain text files, like README, for example.

• The templates must be processed in a batch upon user-initiated action (as in user wants to create a project - several files must be created in the user-appointed directory). It may be beneficial to have an ability to supervise the creation, but this is less important then the ability to run the process entirely automatically.

Bonus features:

• The template language has already a user base (with a potential of reuse of existing templates).

• The templates can be used for code snippets (contain blanks which are filled interactively once the user invokes code-generating routine while editing the file).

• Obvious things like cross-platform-ness, ease of use both through graphical interface and command line.

I made a research, but I won't share my results (yet) so I won't bias the answers. The problem with answering this question is not that the answer is hard to find, but that it is hard to chose one from many.