Many people have pointed out the existance of the
Code Generation Network. This looks like a very nice site and has a big list of
code generation tools. While browsing through it, I found a
link to
this interview of
Dave Thomas. I agree with a lot of what he has to say. Until recently,
CodeSmith
has been a "smelly" code generation tool since it didn't have
a lot of support for active generation, but with the recent
addition of the VS.NET code generator it can now be used as an
active generator. I also have plans to add command line
support and, thanks to a great suggestion by Duncan Godwin, I
have also added a
Nant build task to
my TODO list. As soon as I can get
CodeSmith
legally transfered to me, I will be able to start working on
these ideas. I truely believe that
CodeSmith
has the best template based code generation engine out of
everything I have looked at and if I get to work adding more
active generation support it will truely be a very powerful
tool.