skel

A minimalist tool that generates skeleton directories based on XML files.

Installation

Clone this repo and place it in your home directory (or anywhere you like). cd into the repo and run the setup script.

cd /path/to/cloned/repo
./setup.sh

At this point, you have a few options:

• Add the bin directory inside the application's installation directory to PATH
• Add a symbolic link somewhere onto your PATH. The symlink should point to /path/to/cloned/repo/bin/skel
• Define an alias that your shell will translate to the full path of the executable. E.g: alias skel="/path/to/cloned/repo/bin/skel"

Usage

skel <template> [targets...]

<template> refers to the XML file that skel will use to generate the skeleton directory. All template files are stored in the resources/templates subdirectory of the application's installation directory.

[targets...] are the directories that skel will use as the root for the generated skeletons. [targets] can be omitted, in which case skel will generate the skeleton directory structure in the current working directory. If one of the [targets] is a relative path, skel will look for the target directory in the current working directory; if the specified targets aren't found, skel will create them in the current working directory.

The following explanation assumes that skel is installed in ~/skel.

Examples:

skel gradle-java

This tells skel to search for an XML file called gradle-java.xml inside ~/skel/resources/templates and then generate a skeleton structure inside the current working directory based on the file.

skel gradle-java someproject

skel will use ~/skel/resources/templates/gradle-java.xml to generate a skeleton structure inside a directory named someproject in the current working directory.

Specification Format

The desired directory structure can be completely specified using simple XML files.

Example:

<!--~/skel/resources/templates/gradle-java.xml-->
<root>
    <dir name="src">
         <dir name="main">
             <dir name="java">
                   <file name="HelloWorld.java"/>
             </dir>
         </dir>

         <dir name="test">
             <dir name="java">
                  <file name="HelloWorldTest.java"/>
             </dir>
         </dir>
    </dir>
</root>

Running skel with the above specification file skel gradle-java subproject will result in the following directory structure:

.
└── src
    ├── main
    │   └── java
    │       └── HelloWorld.java
    └── test
        └── java
            └── HelloWorldTest.java

XML Elements

skel only understands XML specification files containing ONLY the following elements: <root>, <dir>, and <file>

<root>

• Denotes the root directory of the resulting skeleton.
• Contains all the other elements in the specification file.
• Cannot be nested inside any other elements (must be top-level).

<dir>

• Represents a directory to be created in the skeleton.
• Can contain any number of children, which can be <dir>s or <file>s.
• Children of a <dir> represents the entities that the resulting directory will contain in the generated skeleton.
• The name attribute is mandatory, which represents the basename of the corresponding directory in the skeleton.
• E.g: <dir name="foobar"/> represents a directory named foobar within its containing directory.

<file>

• Represents a file to be created.
• This element should not contain any children (if it does, the children will be ignored).
• The name attribute is also mandatory, which represents the basename of the created file.
• An optional src attribute can be specified, which is a path (absolute or relative) that points to an existing file whose contents will be copied into the generated file.
  • If a relative path is supplied to src, the path will be resolved relative to the resources/filesrc directory inside the application's installation directory.
  • E.g: <file name="build.gradle.kts" src="sample-buildscript.kts"/> will create a file named build.gradle.kts whose contents are the same as ~/skel/resources/filesrc/sample-buildscript.kts

Example Specification Files

<!-- gradle-java.xml -->
<root>
    <!-- Settings file -->
    <file name="settings.gradle.kts" src="gradle-settings-template">

    <!-- Subproject -->
    <dir name="app">

        <!-- Build script -->
        <file name="build.gradle.kts" src="sample-buildscript"/>

        <!-- Source directory -->
        <dir name="src">
            <dir name="main">
                <dir name="java">
                     <file name="App.java"/>
                </dir>

                <dir name="resources></dir>
            </dir>
            <dir name="test">
                <dir name="java">
                    <file name="AppTest.java"/>
                </dir>
                <dir name="resources></dir>
            </dir>
        </dir>
    </dir>
    
</root>