generating-spruce-with-spruce.md

How can I generate Spruce templates with Spruce itself?

There are a couple of ways to generate spruce templates using spruce.

Defferring Execution

The (( defer )) operator will allow you to defer an operation to the next spruce merge invocation. For example:

do_this_next: (( defer grab data ))
data: my_value

Would produce the following when merged:

data: my_value
do_this_next: (( grab data ))

If necessary, you could chain multiple defers in a row:

defer_a_while: (( defer defer defer grab data ))
data: my_value

Skipping all Evaluation

Specifying --skip-eval when running spruce will result in the entire Eval Phase being skipped. Data is merged together normally. If any params are missing, they will still throw errors. If any pruning or cherry-picking is requested, that will also still occur.