What Is Boot

Boot is a bootstrapper ~~with a very inspired name~~. It aims for simplicity, high customization and multi-language support.

It was created because neither yeoman nor cookiecutter were matching what I really wanted with a bootstrapper.

Yeoman is a great tool, it provide a simple command (yo) that will help you scaffold almost any project. The installation is really simple as it’s just a npm install and a lot of generators are available thanks to the community.

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But to create your own generator you need to write some code in javascript using the library they provide.

Cookiecutter is another great tool. There are many ways to install it like brew, apt or pip as it’s written in python. It relies mostly on templating using a configuration file to list and prompt all the variables used by the template engine (jinja2). Even directories and sub-directories can use the variables defined in the configuration file.

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But it felt kinda hard to ensure that dependencies would always be up-to-date, using the latest version on every new project.

Boot is trying to fit between those two :

the command is simple boot
you can create generators with a simple configuration file
these generators are able to run command like npm install x or go get y (depending on the plugin you installed) ensuring latest version is used for dependencies
you can use templating