Support passing package information when creating a new package

[azinneera]

Description: $subject with bal new and init commands. Eg:

bal new myorg/mypackage:0.1.0 -t lib
bal new myorg/mypackage:0.1.0 -t choreo/gmail_new_attachment_to_drive:1.1.2

bal init myorg/mypackage:0.1.0

[gayaldassanayake]

This document contains a simple analysis of the use of templates for project creation by other external tools. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C7U2afAy8oaY_bXM2fXM5wVMHBllwNZbwkCLsBzr0HQ/edit?usp=sharing

[gayaldassanayake]

Suggestions for the implementation

1. Provide an option to pass key, value pairs to override the configurations of the Ballerina.toml

Example

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --package.name="myproj" --package.org="foo" --package.version="0.1.0"

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --package.org="foo" --build-options.observabilityIncluded=true

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --package.org="foo" --package.keywords=["io", "json"]

Notes

• The package name can be specified twice here. as a param and as a (key, value) pair again.
• Can use a --key value format instead of --key=value.
• We can implement to have simple parameters first and if needed can be extended to have more complex syntax like object arrays.

2. Provide the configurations as an object/ record.

Example

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --config {package: {name:"myproj", org:"foo", version:"0.1.0"}

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --config {package: {org:"foo", version:"0.1.0"}, build-options: {observabilityIncluded:true}}

bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --config {package: {org:"foo", keywords: ["io", "json"]}}

# f we need to include object arrays,
bal new myproj -t choreo/gmail:1.1.2 --config {package: {org:"foo"}, platform.java11.repository:[{path:"xx", scope:"testOnly", version:"1.0.1"}, {path:"yy", scope:"testOnly", version:"4.0.1"}]}

Notes

• Can use a suitable name instead of config for the flag.
• Instead of {key: "value"} format, {"key": "value"} format (similar to json) can be used.
• Intuitive, but can be a bit complex for the user to manage the brackets in a terminal.

[azinneera]

IMO, we can stick to the first option and for Update 3, let's get the implementation done for only the attributes of the table [package] in Ballerina.toml.

We can support the following formats for passing values to attributes in the [package] table

• bal new myproj --package.name="myorg" --package.org="foo" --package.version="0.1.0"
• bal new -t <template> myproj --package.name="myorg" --package.org="foo" --package.version="0.1.0
• bal new -t <template> myproj --package.org="foo" --package.keywords=["io", "json"]

We should also support the following short form for providing just the org, name, and version as shown below

• new foo --package=myorg/foo:0.1.0