Should the generated files be committed to version control?

[tmaxmax]

Basically title.

[a-h]

I do, because without committing your generated files, consumers of the repo have to have templ (and the right version of templ) installed to build the program.

However, it does mean committing lots of generated files. If you don't like that, and you're in a CI/CD style environment, you could let your build server generate the files every time before compiling your program and that would work too.

This repo has the following check:

  ensure-generated:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: cachix/install-nix-action@v23
        with:
          github_access_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - uses: DeterminateSystems/magic-nix-cache-action@v2

      - name: Generate
        run: nix develop --command xc generate

      - name: Ensure clean
        run: git diff --exit-code

Ignoring the Nix stuff, it basically runs templ generate and checks that the files that were generated as part of the build process are the same as the ones that are committed to the repo - i.e. someone didn't forget to run templ generate.

[ghost]

I think trying to pin the templ version to the project's setup might be a better path for most projects because while this practice simplifies the build process and ensures consistency till certain extent, it presents significant challenges in projects where web assets (JavaScript and CSS files) must to be minified and randomly named, introducing variability in the generated templates.

Furthermore, committing these files alongside their unminified counterparts can lead to unnecessary duplication and clutter in the version control system.

If templ could generate the exact same _templ.go file(s) for a given templ and Go version, I think the general recommendation should be to avoid committing those files, and provide the correct setup steps to be able to avoid inconsistencies.

For my projects I use Go Task:

# Taskfile.dist.yaml
version: "3"

tasks:
  init:
    cmds:
      - go install github.com/a-h/templ/cmd/templ@latest # Pin version here and keep it in sync with CI/CD manifest(s)
      - go install golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports@latest
    desc: Install required commands and utilities to work with the project

Anyone on-boarding must just run task init — and it's also executed on default tasks to keep it up to date between upgrades.