Testing templates locally 

Templates may be passed to the g8 command with a file:// URL, and in this case the template is applied as it is currently saved to the file system. In conjunction with the --force option which overwrites output files without prompting, you can test changes to a template as you are making them.

For example, if you have the Unfiltered template cloned locally you could run a command like this:

$ g8 file://unfiltered.g8/ --name=uftest --force

In a separate terminal, test out the template.

$ cd uftest/
$ sbt
> ~ compile

To make changes to the template, save them to its source under the .g8 directory, then repeat the command to apply the template in the original terminal:

$ g8 file://unfiltered.g8/ --name=uftest --force

Your uftest sbt session, waiting with the ~ compile command, will detect the changes and automatically recompile.

Using the Giter8Plugin 

Giter8 supplies an sbt plugin for testing templates before pushing them to a GitHub branch. If you used the foundweekends/giter8.g8 template recommended above, it should already be configured.

If you need to upgrade an existing template project to the current plugin, you can add it as a source dependency in project/giter8.sbt:

addSbtPlugin("org.foundweekends.giter8" % "sbt-giter8" % "0.16.2")

When you enter sbt’s shell in the base directory of a template project that is configured to use this plugin, the action g8Test will apply the template in the default output directory (under target/sbt-test) and run the scripted test for that project in a forked process. You can supply the test scripted as project/giter8.test or src/test/g8/test, otherwise >test is used. This is a good sanity check for templates that are supposed to produce sbt projects.

But what if your template is not for an sbt project?

project/default.properties
TodaysMenu.html

You can still use sbt’s shell to test the template. The lower level g8 action will apply default field values to the template and write it to the same target/g8 directory.

As soon as you push your template to GitHub (remember to name the project with a .g8 extension) you can test it with the actual g8 runtime. When you’re ready, add your template project to the the wiki so other giter8 users can find it.

Using Mill 

There is also an external Mill plugin that can be used to test your templates as well. An example setup can be found below:

import $ivy.`io.chris-kipp::mill-giter8::0.2.0`

import io.kipp.mill.giter8.G8Module

object g8 extends G8Module {
  override def validationTargets =
    Seq("example.compile", "example.fix", "example.reformat")
}

This plugin only supports `src` layouts, but gives you some useful targets like g8.validate which will both test the generation of your template and also ensure any targets defined with validationTargets can also be ran against your generated project.