The project name provided to deps-new via the :name argument is used to derive the default value of a number of variables that are then available for substituion when a template is generated.

In general, any string of the form {{<text>}} where <text> matches one of the built-in variables or any command-line argument, will be replaced by the value of that variable or argument.

The value supplied via :name is used for the {{raw-name}} substitution in templates.

If the project name is not a qualified symbol, it will be turned into one by repeating the name as both the "namespace" and the "name" portion of the symbol, e.g., :name my-lib will be treated as my-lib/my-lib for the purposes of deriving the remaining variables. If the project name is a qualified symbol, it will be used as-is.

We will use a project name of com.acme/my.cool-lib as the illustration for the following derivation examples.

If :target-dir is not provided on the command-line, it will default to the trailing portion of the project name, e.g., "my.cool-lib" (as a string).

All of the variables listed below can be overridden on the command-line by passing named arguments that match the variable name, e.g., :version '"1.2.3"' to override {{version}}.

The following variables are derived from the (qualified) project name, again assuming com.acme/my.cool-lib as the example :name parameter.

• {{artifact/id}} -- "my.cool-lib",
• {{group/id}} -- "com.acme"; note: if the leading portion of the project name does not contain a . then a prefix of "net.clojars." will be added so as to help your project conform to the Clojars Verified Group Names policy,
• {{main}} -- "my.cool-lib",
• {{name}} -- "com.acme/my.cool-lib",
• {{raw-name}} -- "com.acme/my.cool-lib"; note: this is the original value of the :name command-line argument,
• {{scm/domain}} -- "github.com" because com.acme does not indicate a known SCM domain; see SCM Domains below for more details,
• {{scm/user}} -- "acme"; note: this is the leading portion of the project name, with known SCM hosts removed -- see below -- and any leading com. or org. removed,
• {{scm/repo}} -- "my.coo.lib",
• {{top}} -- "com.acme"; note: this is the leading portion of the project name, with known SCM hosts removed -- see below.

The following variables are "derived" from the template and/or your execution environment:

• {{description}} -- this is usually specified as :description in the template.edn file but will default to "FIXME: my new <template> project." otherwise,
• {{developer}} -- the capitalized version of your current username,
• {{now/date}} -- the current date, formatted as yyyy-MM-dd,
• {{now/year}} -- the current year (four digits),
• {{user}} -- your current username,
• {{version}} -- the version string; defaults to "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT".

The keys in the template.edn file are also available as variable substitutions where they are not overridden via the variables above. For example, if template.edn contained :developer, it would be ignored because there is a built-in variable {{developer}}. This allows template authors to provide their own defaults for variables that are unique to their template, which can then be overridden via command-line arguments.

Any other command-line arguments provided also become available as variables, e.g., :foo/bar 42 will become the variable {{foo/bar}} with a value of "42".

Finally, for all unqualified variable names that have a string as the underlying value, two additional variables are available in templates:

• {{<key>/file}} -- the key's value as a filename (/-separated, with _), e.g., {{top/file}} and {{main/file}} would be "com/acme" and "my/cool_lib" for our example, and {{raw-name/file}} would be "com/acme/my/cool_lib",
• {{<key>/ns}} -- the key's value as a namespace (dot-separated, with -), e.g., {{top/ns}} and {{main/ns}} would still be "com.acme" and "my.cool-lib" for our example, but {{raw-name/ns}} would be "com.acme.my.cool-lib",.

All derived variables listed above have strings as their underlying value by default but variables provided via template.edn or via the command-line may have non-string values, which will not be subject to this additional /file and /ns processing. Variables with qualified names, i.e., which contain /, will also not be subject to this processing, even if they have a string value.

For some unqualified variables this additional processing may make no sense, but it is intended as a convenience where you know you want either a filename or namespace.

deps-new "knows about" the same SCM services as tools.deps, including GitHub, GitLab, and others and treats project names that contain a reverse domain name based on those sites in a special manner.

If the project name begins with the reverse domain name of one of the supported SCM services, that prefix is removed from the values of {{scm/user}} and {{top}}.

In other words, a project name of io.gitlab.myname/myproject will cause "gitlab.com" to be selected for {{scm/domain}} and both {{scm/user}} and {{top}} will be "myname". Similarly, for the other services listed in the Deps and CLI Reference.

A project name of com.acme/myproject will cause "github.com" to be selected for {{scm/domain}}, {{scm/user}} will be "acme", and {{top}} will be "com.acme".

In all three cases, {{scm/repo}} and {{main}} will be "myproject". These variables can all be overridden individually on the command-line.