Alternative generators

[magick93]

Hello

The yaktor dsl and metamodels look really good!

However I would like to have more flexibility over the generated code.

Can you please briefly outline what is required to add a new xtend generator?

Thanks

[matthewadams]

Adding a new xtend generator is no small undertaking. As it stands today, we haven't had enough time to work on Yaktor, but plan on returning to the project as soon as we can with a substantial refactoring, updating many of our dependencies and revamping parts of the architecture. Further, we are considering alternatives to Xtext & Xtend for the DSL & metamodels. In the meantime, if you're looking to stay with generating Node.js code, you can simply fork the project & modify the current code generators.

[magick93]

Thanks for the update.

Out of interest, what alternatives to xtext and xtend are you looking into?

[matthewadams]

We are considering YAML. It would be more verbose than the DSL, but it would be much more portable & lightweight, opening the door to languages other than Xtend for code generation. We also theorize that it would be possible to provide intelligent editors by extending IDEs' existing YAML editors with intelligence that considers our schema (which would also be expressed in YAML) in order to provide autocompletion. Another challenge is that, while JSON Schema is maturing, it doesn't appear as though YAML Schema is, implying that we might have to take that on, too, as part of our effort. If that appears to be too much, we might consider JSON instead of YAML until such time as YAML Schema is more mature.