Option in the Yeoman Generator to generate a "blank" project (without "hello world")

[ebousse]

Problem

The Langium Yeoman generator is great to kickstart a working project around a small "hello world" DSL, and the provided examples of code to be written around the AST (eg. the example validator) are very useful to understand Langium.

However, a typical flow is:

1. generate a langium project with yo langium
2. modify the default .langium file,
3. run npm run langium:generate
4. run npm run build

If no other change is done, step 4 will always fail because the provided examples of generator, validator and CLI won't compile anymore. This is because these examples are made for the "hello world" default DSL, which is not there anymore because of step 2.

This means that two extra steps are in fact always required:

5. modify generator, validator and CLI by commenting/changing/removing the parts that cannot compile
6. run npm run build once again, and hope it compiles

A problem I encountered when I was starting with Langium, and that I now currently encounter when I try to teach Langium to students, is that the additional step 5 is quite difficult for people who are just starting with Langium. Because at this stage one does not know how things works, it is hard to know how to make the changes, and it is easy to make mistakes (eg. commenting too many things).

Idea

I would find very useful to be offered the choice, in the Yeoman generator, to either kickstart a project with the "hello world" example DSL (and accompanying generator, validator and CLI), or to have a "blank" project without any semantic model nor grammar rules. Such blank project could still provide files for the generator, validator and CLI, but where one would simply find // TODO in each place where a change will be required for the component to work in the future.

This would allow kickstarting a project with steps 1 to 4, avoiding the hazardous steps 5-6 (especially for beginners).

[msujew]

I agree, this makes a lot of sense. I've talked with a few people at conferences in the past who had this issue as well.