Molt

Molt is a script to stub out projects in any language instantly using Mustache-based project templates.

You can use Molt to decrease the amount of boilerplate code you need to write when starting new projects: the README, copyright notices, license info, logging configuration, option parsing, test harness, packaging information, .gitignore, directory hierarchy, etc.

A minimal sample usage looks like--

$ molt -c path/to/config.json path/to/template/dir/

Molt follows the Groome rules for Mustache-based project templates. See the Groome page for project template syntax. This version of Molt follows version 0.1.0 of Groome.

Molt is written in Python and can be found on GitHub and on PyPI (the Python Package Index).

Feedback is welcome. You can also file bug reports and feature requests on the GitHub issues page.

Requirements

Molt supports the following Python versions:

• Python 2.7
• Python 3.2
• PyPy

Since Molt is a development tool, there are no plans to support Python 2.6 or earlier.

Molt's dependencies are--

• Pystache version 0.5.2 or above
• PyYAML (optional, to support YAML format for configuration files)

The installation process below installs these dependencies automatically.

You can install to Python 2 with either setuptools or Distribute (preferred). For Python 3, you must use Distribute.

Install It

$ pip install molt

Test it

$ molt --run-tests

Try it

Start with the demo Groome template to play with:

$ molt --create-demo --output demo
$ ls -p demo
expected/	lambdas/	partials/	sample.json	structure/

Render the template with the sample context provided:

$ molt --output output --config demo/sample.json demo

Run the newly-created project (which can also be seen here)):

$ python output/hello.py world
Hello, world!

For help documentation and available options--

$ molt -h

Note the --visualize and --with-visualize options that let you quickly visualize entire directory contents.

$ molt --visualize output

If using Python, you can also use Molt as a library (though the API is not yet stable). See the Molter class in the molt.molter module.

Contribute

If using GitHub, after forking--

$ git clone git@github.com:yourusername/molt.git
$ cd molt
$ git remote add upstream git://github.com/cjerdonek/molt.git
$ git fetch upstream

To run unit tests--

$ python runmolt.py --run-tests

To test Molt with multiple versions of Python (with a single command!), you can use tox:

pip install tox
tox

If you don't have all Python versions listed in tox.ini, you can do--

tox -e py27  # for example

To run from source any molt command of the form--

$ molt [options] [DIRECTORY]

simply type--

$ python -m molt.scripts.molt [options] [DIRECTORY]

To include the Groome tests in your test runs, initialize and update the Groome project submodule--

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

To run a subset of the tests, you can filter your test runs using one or more prefixes. For example--

$ python runmolt.py --run-tests molt.test.general molt.test.dir

Molt is also set up on GitHub to work with Travis CI.

Python 3 Tips

Molt is written in Python 2, so the code must be converted to Python 3 prior to using with Python 3. The installation process does this automatically.

To convert the code to Python 3 manually, run the following using Python 3 (with Distribute installed)--

python setup.py build

This writes the converted code to a subdirectory of the project directory called build.

It is possible (though not recommended) to convert the code without using setup.py. You can try this with 2to3, as follows (two steps):

2to3 --write --nobackups --no-diffs --doctests_only molt
2to3 --write --nobackups --no-diffs molt

This converts the code (and doctests) in place.

To import molt from a source distribution while using Python 3, be sure that you are importing from a directory containing the converted code (e.g. from the build directory after converting), and not from the original (unconverted) source directory. Otherwise, you will get a syntax error. You can help prevent this by not running the Python IDE from the project directory when importing Molt while using Python 3.

Author

Molt is authored by Chris Jerdonek. Chris is also the author of Groome and is the current Pystache maintainer.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2011-2013 Chris Jerdonek. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• The names of the copyright holders may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.