devel/generate 3.0 DragonFly

Generate is a text preprocessor that I originally wrote to help me write custom accounting applications based on the Progress database product. I felt that the built in wasn't useful enough so I designed a new one and implemented it. It actually started life as a package configuration and batch file generator for DOS and mutated to a simple script interpreter to replace shar file distribution. At this point it has almost nothing in common with that first program.

The basic idea behind generate is to create a script which generates files. There is some simple flow control constructs but the power lies in its macro processing. I have shamelessly stolen ideas from cpp, m4, make and David Tilbrook's dtree.