How can I handle template dependencies in Template Toolkit?

My static web pages are built from a huge bunch of templates which are inter-included using Template Toolkit's "import" and "include", so page.html looks like this:

[% INCLUDE top %]
[% IMPORT middle %]

Then top might have even more files included.

I have very many of these files, and they have to be run through to create the web pages in various languages (English, French, etc., not computer languages). This is a very complicated process and when one file is updated I would like to be able to automatically remake only the necessary files, using a makefile or something similar.

Are there any tools like makedepend for C files which can parse template toolkit templates and create a dependency list for use in a makefile?

Or are there better ways to automate this process?

Solution

Template Toolkit does come with its own command line script called ttree for building TT websites ala make.

Here is an ttree.cfg file I use often use on TT website projects here on my Mac:

# directories
src = ./src
lib = ./lib
lib = ./content
dest = ./html

# pre process these site file
pre_process = site.tt

# copy these files
copy = \.(png|gif|jpg)$

# ignore following
ignore = \b(CVS|RCS)\b
ignore = ^#
ignore = ^\.DS_Store$
ignore = ^._

# other options
verbose
recurse

Just running ttree -f ttree.cfg will rebuild the site in dest only updating whats been changed at source (in src) or in my libraries (in lib).

For more fine grained dependencies have a look a Template Dependencies.

Update - And here is my stab at getting dependency list by subclassing Template::Provider:

{
    package MyProvider;
    use base 'Template::Provider';

    # see _dump_cache in Template::Provider
    sub _dump_deps {
        my $self = shift;

        if (my $node = $self->{ HEAD }) {
            while ($node) {
                my ($prev, $name, $data, $load, $next) = @$node;
        
                say {*STDERR} "$name called from " . $data->{caller}
                    if exists $data->{caller};
        
                $node = $node->[ 4 ];
            }
        }
    }
}


use Template;

my $provider = MyProvider->new;

my $tt = Template->new({
    LOAD_TEMPLATES => $provider,
});

$tt->process( 'root.tt', {} ) or die $tt->error;

$provider->_dump_deps;

The code above displays all dependencies called (via INCLUDE, INSERT, PROCESS and WRAPPER) and where called from within the whole root.tt tree. So from this you could build a ttree dependency file.

/I3az/