What is it that you say that can be achieved with functions only? The end result of useing CodeGen is to add functions to the currenty module without the user having to spell them out (just like use GenServer does, for example). That has to be done with metaprogramming, AFAIK.
Are you saying that we should delegate to the template module instead of adding the function definitions to the user module?
In my case, having a component library was the use case that inspired this library. In such a library, you might have fancier_input(assigns) which depends on input(assigns). If you delegate to another module, you’ll have something like:
defdelegate fancier_input(assigns), to: SomeLibraryModule
defdelegate input(assigns), to: SomeLibraryModule
This means that if you change our own implementation of input(assigns), those changes will not be reflected on fancier_input(assigns). And in this case I’d argue you want these changes to be reflected. The goal is not to be maximally functionaly pure, the goal is to have generators that work on demand by “generating” only the functions you want to customize.
By “macro syntax” you mean the quote block or the CodeGen.block "name" do ... end blocks inside the quote block?
In case it’s not clear, I’m not doing much more magic than what a normal use SomeModule macro would do. CodeGen is basically a fancier version of the use ... macro which supports (optionally) adding some code to your file. Normal use ... invocations (such as the ones you find in Phoenix or Plug, for example), already perform a huge amount of magic behind the scenes to make things work.
This is a fair point! I’m the fisr to aggree that CodeGen, despite being a simple library might be quite the concept shift from what is usually done in Elixir. Currently, everything that generates code in Elixir is either a mix generator or a macro. CodeGen aims to combine the best of both approaches, but it hasn’t been validade yet. I’m mainly putting it out there as an experiment to see what peoples’ opinions are.
Could you expand on this last point please? I’m not suer I understand. Do you think that end users should never have to call use CodeGen, ... themselves?
