rte (rusty template executor) renders templated project directories using Minijinja.

For example if you have a directory examples/mytemplate/ which contains files like this:

# {{ values.app_name }}

* Author: {{ values.author }}

You can prepare a parameters file like this (examples/params.yaml):

app_name: myapp
author: John Doe

And then run rte like this:

rte -p examples/params.yaml examples/mytemplate output

rte -s app_name=myapp -s author="John Doe" examples/mytemplate output

This will go through all files in the directory, run them through Minijinja and put them under output.

There is already Cookiecutter for bootstrapping projects, why creating a new tool? I hadn't played with Rust for a long time and this was a good opportunity. Also I was looking for a solution to test Backstage software templates (see rte --backstage).

rte [OPTIONS] <SOURCE> <DESTINATION>

Sources: directory, .tar.gz archive, gitlab://host/group/project[@ref], or github://host/owner/repo[@ref]

Destinations: directory or .tar.gz archive

Options:

• -p, --parameters <FILE> - Parameter file (YAML), can be used multiple times
• -s, --set <KEY=VALUE> - Set parameter directly, overrides file parameters
• -f, --force - Write into existing directory
• --backstage - Use Backstage syntax (${{ }} instead of {{ }})
• --parameters-on-root - Don't wrap parameters under values key
• --template-path <PATH> - Template subdirectory within source (for archives/repos)
• --gitlab-token <TOKEN> - GitLab token (or set GITLAB_TOKEN env var)
• --github-token <TOKEN> - GitHub token (or set GITHUB_TOKEN env var)

Examples:

# From directory
rte -p params.yaml ./template ./output

# From GitLab
rte -p params.yaml gitlab://gitlab.com/group/project@main ./output

# From GitHub
rte -p params.yaml github://github.com/owner/repo@main ./output

# Backstage template from GitHub
rte --backstage -p params.yaml github://github.com/backstage/software-templates@main ./output