Use AST instead of ejs templates for generators

[clayrisser]

I think it would be better to generate code from an abstract syntax tree rather than using templates.

In the past, I have found the @babel/generator to be a solid choice for generating code from AST, however, that would not work for typescript. Perhaps, the getTextOfNode() method in the typescript compiler utilities would do the job.

https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/aa3734c14834afb454c49bc956489980d990a765/src/compiler/utilities.ts#L503

This is definitely a much more flexible approach because it conforms to the user's style of choice. It also allows for dynamically modifying existing files without the huge risk of destroying code.

[bajtos]

I think it would be better to generate code from an abstract syntax tree rather than using templates.

In my experience, I find templates much easier to read and reason about, because they resemble the actual source code produced.

However, I am open to experimentation! Would you like to create a proof-of-concept pull request showing how to use an AST-based template in one of our lb4 CLI command and convince us that it's a better approach?

It also allows for dynamically modifying existing files without the huge risk of destroying code.

Modification of existing code is a different task, it was never our intention to use templates for that. Based on the discussion in #1656, we may use ts-simple-ast package for this task. See also #1359.

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[clayrisser]

@bajtos
I built a project that should make it easy to reason with AST for code generation.

https://github.com/codejamninja/react-ast

[deepakrkris]

looks like this issue was covered, mostly with #2426 , closing now, please open a new issue for additional topics.