Andy - Quickly generate skeletons of websites

There are endless tools around to generate web apps and projects. A lot of frameworks ship with their own, like Rails, Grails, Django et al. Then there's Maven. Then there are tools like Middleman, or Monk. But what if all I want to do is put a bit of a skeleton of a website in place, with the exact libraries I typically use?

This is where Andy comes in. Andy is a Ruby gem, but it's not a Ruby-centric project. It works by pouring pints.

What's a 'pint'?

A 'pint' is the instructions for generating your starter site. At the most basic, it's a set of files to be copied in to your new project directory. In fact, at time of writing, that's all a pint is. Hooks to build more complex pints will follow in time, but for now, a pint is a set of static files that get copied in to a new project dir for you.

How do I use it?

You need git. Andy does everything with git. If you don't have git, go get git.

Install using

gem install andy

Now, navigate to a folder, and type andy my_new_project

You should see a bit of gumf, whilst Andy configures himself, and grabs the basic pint sources. Then you'll find a folder called my_new_project, which has an index.html, a css directory with Eric Meyer's CSS reset in it, and a JS directory, with nothing in it.

You could also do

andy my_new_project basic

Or, replace basic with the name of your chosen pint. Andy ships with the following pints:

  • basic - uber-barebones
  • skeleton - based on the Skeleton framework
  • homer - based on my Homer toolkit

Ok, I'll bite: why 'Andy', and why 'Pint'?

Andy Capp is a cartoon character who drinks 'pints'. I had 'chef recipes' in mind when I was thkinking about what to call them.