defcode

Introduction

A loader for JS code generators that passes them the contents of another file (the definition file). Code generators must be modules that export a single function, as in:

module.exports = (def) => {
    // do stuff and return a string
}

It rewrites output files only when they change, to minimize the work done by build systems like make that use file modification time to determine the need for rebuilding. Generators should output text using newlines; defcode will convert them to the local system's EOL.

Usage

defcode [options] <generator source file> ...

Multiple generator sources can be passed on one command line. Note that this does not make sense with the -o,--output option, so all generator sources need to be named <output file name>.js to pass multiple sources on one command line.

YAML files containing yaml-include-style tags are supported. It is not necessary to run defcode from the same directory as the input YAML file; it will temporarily change to that directory while loading.

Options

-d, --def

Specifies the definition file to load. This option is required.

File extension	Parsing	Parameter type passed to generator
.json	JSON	Object
.yaml	YAML	Object
.yml	YAML	Object
Other/none	None	String

-o, --output

Specifies the output file to be written. The default is the name of the generator source file with the .js stripped from the end.

Examples

• defcode -d def.yaml MySource.cpp.js: reads def.yaml, parses it as YAML, loads MySource.cpp.js and executes its exported function with the parsed YAML as an object, and writes the returned string to MySource.cpp.