Should we have a system for copying resources?

[violetfrost]

Images, CSS, JavaScript, etc... should SHIT copy these kinds of things to the output directory?

[acinis]

Keeping everything in the output directory does not give you a clean separation. You can't just delete the entire output directory and regenerate the project.

Here are some ideas from the time when I wrote a similar tool myself (it later became a really simple static page generator):

• The basic idea is to keep everything in the input directory, but use file extensions to dictate how the generation should be performed. So, .png and .jpg files were passed through optimize-image.sh, .html files were preprocessed, the rest was copied as they are.

• Another interesting approach is to use dual extensions like .html.tmpl and .css.tmpl so that all file types can be preprocessed (shit will only process files with the .tmpl extension).

• Another solution is to store all kinds of files in separate directories such as src/static/, src/templates/, src/images/, and then write a script that will do the right thing based on the location of the file, for example:

  # Unprocessed files (eg. images/logo.png)
  cp -r src/static/ pub/
  
  # Processed via shit (--force for override files)
  shit -i src/templates/ -o pub/ --force
  
  # Processed via other tools
  optimize.sh -i src/images/ -o pub/assets/images/ --force

Just my random 5 cents 😄