Making Other Changes to Flexlate Templates and Configuration

Flexlate provides commands that automatically manage configuration such as fxt add source or fxt config target. But not every change you might want to make to the config has a command.

Use fxt sync to Bring Arbitrary Changes to Flexlate Branches

Enter fxt sync that will take the current state of your config and render it to the Flexlate branches before merging back into your working branch.

Note

Be sure to commit your changes before running fxt sync. In general, Flexlate always wants you to commit your changes before running operations.

Possible Uses for fxt sync

Why might you want to do this? Let’s go through a few examples.

Moving an Applied Template

For example, say you applied a template but later decide you want to move it.

    $ fxt add output copier-simple-example some/path
 Applying template copier-simple-example to /tmp/tmpzfa7w27_
 Updating 1 applied templates

question1? Format: yaml
my answer

The second question
question2? Format: float
10

    create  my answer.txt



    create  temp.txt


✔ Successfully updated template output
✔ Successfully applied template copier-simple-example to /tmp/tmpzfa7w27_

$ mv some/path other

$ git add -A

$ git commit -m 'Move copier-simple-example from some/path to other'
[main 3d8ef19] Move copier-simple-example from some/path to other
 2 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 rename {some/path => other}/flexlate.json (100%)
 rename {some/path => other}/my answer.txt (100%)

$ fxt sync
 Syncing local changes to flexlate branches
 Syncing changes in flexlate configs to output

    create  my answer.txt


✔ Successfully updated template output
✔ Successfully synced local changes to flexlate branches

Moving a Template Source

There are several reasons why you might want to move a template source:

• You are using a local template and you want to move it.

• You are using a template from a remote repository and you want to switch it to a fork.

• You are using a template from a remote repository and it was renamed

Just manually update the flexlate.json file containing your template source, commit the changes, then run fxt sync.

Updating a Single Applied Template

Flexlate has built-in functionality to update all the applied templates within a project for a given template source. It does not have a built-in command to update a single applied template, but you can do it by manually updating the version in the flexlate.json file and running fxt sync.

Migrating Add Modes

Say you have taken the default add mode local setting and you are applying a lot of templates but you don’t like having flexlate.json files scattered throughout your project. You want to switch to project add mode, but Flexlate cannot do this automatically. You can do this manually by taking the contents of those flexlate.json files and moving them to one flexlate.json file in your project root. You will need to update the paths of the applied templates as well as the add mode accordingly. Then change the default add mode in flexlate-project.json to project so that all new applied templates will use project add mode automatically. Once you have it all done, commit your changes and run fxt sync.