Set a local destinationPath to a composed sub-generator with #composeWith()

[canercandan]

I have done some quick search among the submitted issues, but didnt find anything about passing a specific destinationPath when we call the #composeWith() method that makes the value local to the sub-generator.

I am trying to find the best way to reuse as many existing generators as possible but here it is I am facing an issue, most of the generators cf. generator-travis will generate their files based on its default destinationPath path.

It's right we can still redefine the destinationPath thanks to #destinationRoot() method but it could quickly become error-prone since it remains a global value to the whole generators (composed one too).

The RunContext design calls the generator methods according to ordered groups (default, writing, …), meaning if set a path at the top of the run-loop and set another path meanwhile we will get a collision and only the last one will be considered, the explanation is a bit confused but I guess you are getting the point.

For the yeoman designers, do you think it could be a valuable enhancement ?

[SBoudrias]

For the yeoman designers, do you think it could be a valuable enhancement ?

Yes, this would be very useful.

Although there's some historic reasons as to why destination root is globally shared.

Basically, we have a lot of generators who're not relying on the built-in files utilities. We got a lot of people using some raw fs methods with paths relative the the current working directory. To allow destination root to work, we had to bind this virtual path with the actual CWD.

This have been working well to get older generators to update to new versions of the generator framework more easily, and to allow some amount of composition with legacy generators.

Binding the destination roots to the CWD, just makes bad generators harder to break.

That being said, we should totally reconsider this for 1.0. It'd be way easier if you could just tell a generator to run inside of x folder.

For now though, you could ask the author of generator-travis to take a path parameter and base themselves of that path to know where to generate their files.

[canercandan]

@SBoudrias Thanks for your answer it's much more clear now. I dont have enough knowledges regarding the yeoman-generator code structure to provide a PR for now so I will follow your recommendation to request a PR to the sub-generators I am using with a path option.

[iamstarkov]

@canercandan can you give me some insight why do you need this feature?

[canercandan]

Sure, let says you are using the travis generator twice on two sub-directories of the generated project, that means the resulting files hierarchy may look like:

/folder1/.travis.yml
/folder2/.travis.yml

The easiest way to accomplish this is by adding a path option in the used generator in order to set the destination path of the copied file.

[iamstarkov]

okay, is there any real life use cases for this?

[canercandan]

Sure consider a fullstack project repository including frontend and backend
(client and server).

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 17:40 Vladimir Starkov notifications@github.com
wrote:

okay, is there any real life use cases for this?

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[res63661]

Anybody ever figure this out? I am having the devil's own time figuring out how to overtly set the destinationPath on a subgenerator

[mshima]

this.composeWith(gen, {destinationRoot: subDir})?

[kalbert312]

this.composeWith(gen, {destinationRoot: subDir})?

This doesn't seem to be working for me. yo@next-4. After passing { destinationRoot: this.destinationPath("client") } to my subgenerator compose calls the subgenerators are still running in the original this.destinationPath

[mshima]

@kalbert312 please open a new bug report specifying which generator version you are using.

[robinmanuelthiel]

Worked for me with this code:

this.composeWith('my-generator', {
  destinationRoot: this.destinationRoot('sub/folder')
});