How can I include common strings (regexes) in several projects written in different languages?

Question

I have a simple Go library (~300 lines, mostly type declarations and nice methods and compatibility methods for gomobile etc., also pretty-printing scripts). The heart of the whole project are two regexes, placed in a separate file in my Go repository.

Now I want to port that simple library to Python, Java (Android), maybe Javascript. I want the regexes to rest in a single Git repository (maybe even the Golang one).

What is the best way to include the regexes at compile/build time as string constants? In case of Golang, it seems that the only way is to use go generate, which generates source code files and could include those regexes from a plain text file. So I decided to make a separate Go source code file for easy parsing by other build tools in case of Python, Java, Javascript. I would appreciate any advice how to do it efficiently that way. I could also make a separate repository for two regexes and use git submodules (or even treat it as a sepratate Go package in Go project).

But I've lost my hope for a pretty solution, and that's why I'm asking here and not on SO; how do you solve such problems? The simplest way would be to manually "cherry-pick" commits from each repository, setting author field manually.

Answer 1

It is a simple solution, but you could always put the regexes into a properties file, and then have the various code bases load their regexes as text values and compile them at runtime.

Answer 2

Here is one such project:

References

• minimal/tools : minimal static site generator github repo