Creating Scaffolds

This guide explains how to create project scaffolds that others can use to generate new projects.

Project Scaffold Structure

A project scaffold requires a specific directory structure:

scaffold-directory/           # Can be any name
├── scaffold.yaml             # Configuration file
└── {{ .Project }}/           # Root directory with dynamic name
    ├── file1.txt             # Template files
    ├── file2.md              # Template files
    └── src/                  # Nested directories
        └── more-files...     # More template files

Root Directory Naming

The root directory within your scaffold must use one of the following dynamic naming patterns:

• {{ .Project }} - Base project name
• {{ .ProjectSlug }} - Project name in slug format
• {{ .ProjectSnake }} - Project name in snake_case
• {{ .ProjectKebab }} - Project name in kebab-case
• {{ .ProjectCamel }} - Project name in camelCase
• {{ .ProjectPascal }} - Project name in PascalCase

Configuration File

Project scaffolds require a scaffold.yaml or scaffold.yml config file placed at the root of the scaffold directory. This file has a whole range of options for defining questions to ask the user and different flags/options that can be set.

See Scaffold Config for all available options.

Multi-File Output

Scaffold supports generating multiple files or directories from a single template using the [varname] path convention. When a directory or filename contains [varname] and the variable is declared in the each config, the path is expanded once per item in the list.

scaffold-directory/
├── scaffold.yaml
└── {{ .Project }}/
    ├── [services]/          # One directory per service
    │   ├── handler.go
    │   └── routes.go
    └── main.go

See the each configuration reference for details on setup and the as transformation option.

Template Files

All files within the root directory will be processed by the template engine. You can use template syntax to customize content:

# {{ .Project }}

{{ .Scaffold.description }}

## License

This project is licensed under the {{ .Scaffold.license }} License.

For more details on template syntax, see the template engine documentation.