What's the recommended way to copy multiple dotfiles with yeoman? - yeoman

Question

I am building a yeoman generator for a fairly typical node app:
/
|--package.json
|--.gitignore
|--.travis.yml
|--README.md
|--app/
|--index.js
|--models
|--views
|--controllers
In the templates folder of my yeoman generator, I have to rename the dotfiles (and the package.json) to prevent them from being processed as part of the generator:
templates/
|--_package.json
|--_gitignore
|--_travis.yml
|--README.md
|--app/
|--index.js
|--models
|--views
|--controllers
I see a lot of generators that copy dotfiles individually manually:
this.copy('_package.json', 'package.json')
this.copy('_gitignore', '.gitignore')
this.copy('_gitattributes', '.gitattributes')
I think it's a pain to manually change my generator code when I add new template files. I would like to automatically copy all files in the /templates folder, and rename the ones that are prefixed with _.
What's the best way to do this?
If I were to describe my intention in imaginary regex, this is what it would look like:
this.copy(/^_(.*)/, '.$1')
ths.copy(/^[^_]/)
EDIT
This is the best I can manage:
this.expandFiles('**', { cwd: this.sourceRoot() }).map(function() {
this.copy file, file.replace(/^_/, '.')
}, this);

Answer 1

I found this question through Google as I was looking for the solution, and then I figured it out myself.
Using the new fs API, you can use globs!
// Copy all non-dotfiles
this.fs.copy(
this.templatePath('static/**/*'),
this.destinationRoot()
);
// Copy all dotfiles
this.fs.copy(
this.templatePath('static/.*'),
this.destinationRoot()
);

Answer 2

Adding to #callumacrae 's answer: you can also define dot: true in the globOptions of copy(). That way a /** glob will include dotfiles. Example:
this.fs.copy(
this.templatePath('files/**'),
this.destinationPath('client'),
{ globOptions: { dot: true } }
);
A list of available Glob options can be found in the README of node-glob.

Answer 3

Just got this working for me: the globOptions needs to be in the fifth argument:
this.fs.copyTpl(
this.templatePath('sometemplate/**/*'),
this.destinationPath(this.destinationRoot()),
null,
null,
{ globOptions: { dot: true } }
);

Answer 4

If you don't want to use templates that starts with a dot, you can use the dive module to achieve something identical:
var templatePath = this.templatePath('static-dotfiles');
var destinationRoot = this.destinationRoot();
dive(templatePath, {all: true}, function (err, file, stat) {
if (err) throw err;
this.fs.copy(
file,
(destinationRoot + path.sep + path.relative(templatePath, file))
.replace(path.sep + '_', path.sep + '.')
);
}.bind(this));
where static-dotfiles is the name of your template folder for dotfiles where _ replaces . in filenames (ex: _gitignore).
Don't forget to add a requirement to dive at the top of your generator with
var dive = require('dive');
Of course, this also works for copyTpl.
Note that all subparts of paths that starts with a _ will be replaced by a . (ex: static-dotfiles/_config/_gitignore will be generated as .config/.gitignore)