Introduction

Vala GenProject is an utility that helps creating project skeletons for Vala programs and libraries

How to use

Vala GenProject includes a Gtk+ UI and a command line interface and its usage is pretty simple, just select the wanted template, complete the dialog with the required information like author email and license, and click on the generate button.

Screeshot

You can see Vala GenProject here

How to create a new project template

Project templates are defined by 3 file:

template.ini file
template.png file
template.tar.gz

These files can be stored in

/usr/share/vtg/templates for system wide templates
/home/andrea/.local/share/gen-project/templates for user templates

(you can change these path at compile time)

Template.ini file

This file defines the template and it's a simple keyfile with just one Template section. For example:

[Template]
version=1.0
name=Console Application
description=A Vala console application project
details=This template will create and empty vala project with an empty main method
language=vala
build-system=autotools
tags=glib,console

key	description
version	Template file version should be always 1.0
name	It's the template name so it should be short and concise and shouldn't be translated
description	A longer name that better describe the template
details	An even more detailed note
language	The programming language used in this template. Eg. vala, genie
build-system	The build system used in this template. Eg. autotools, waf, scons
tags	Template tags. Eg. gnome, glib, console, gtk+ etc

All the language, build-system and tags fields can be used to present a filtered list of templates in the ui (this is not supported by the current frontend) and here there are some tables that can be used as reference when choosing these values:

language	description
Vala	Vala programming language
Genie	Genie programming language

build system	description
autotools	autotools with valac support >= 1.11
waf	waf build system
scons	scons build system
cmake	cmake build system

An here a list of common tags

tags	description
gnome	for a gnome application template
gtk+	for a Gtk+ application template
console	for a console application template
plugin	for a plugin template, futher tags can be rhythmbox for a rhythmbox plugin or eog...

Template.tar.gz

This file contains the actual template files. For example the console.tar.gz contails:

-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea    33 2010-06-06 17:35 AUTHORS.template
-rwxr-xr-x andrea/andrea   164 2010-06-06 17:48 autogen.sh.template
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 17:35 ChangeLog
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea   874 2010-06-06 17:44 configure.ac.template
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea    39 2010-06-06 17:35 MAINTAINERS.template
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea   483 2010-06-06 17:47 Makefile.am.template
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 17:35 NEWS
drwxr-xr-x andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 18:47 po/
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea    48 2010-06-06 17:35 po/LINGUAS
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 17:35 po/ChangeLog
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea    11 2010-06-06 17:35 po/POTFILES.skip
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea    91 2010-06-06 17:35 po/POTFILES.in
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 17:35 README
drwxr-xr-x andrea/andrea     0 2010-06-06 23:28 src/
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea   354 2010-06-06 23:28 src/main.vala.template
-rw-r--r-- andrea/andrea   338 2010-06-06 17:47 src/Makefile.am.template

As you can see there are a lot of files with the template extension, these ones will be read by vala-gen-project and parsed for special tag substitution. After this process the .template extension will be removed from the resulting file.

Here a list of known tags:

tag	description
${license-header}	the chosen license source header
${license-header-vala}	the chosen license source header formatted as a Vala comment
${license-program-type}	the program type "library" or "program"
${license-name}	the license name
${license-version}	the license version
${license-web-site}	the license web site
${license-publisher}	the license publisher
${author-name}	the project author
${author-email}	the project author email
${project-name}	the project name
${project-description}	the project description
${project-uppercase-make-name}	the project name in uppercase make compatible format
${project-make-name}	the project name in make compatible format

Other

Vala GenProject use a convenience library to do all its parsing and project generation so you can use it in your project too. Unlucky the documentation is still not written but you can see how is it used from the vala GenProject sources at: http://code.google.com/p/vtg/source/browse/trunk/gen-project/main.vala#114

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