Automating FHIR IG Generation from Non-FHIR Sources by cloning myself

An awesome lot of my FHIR IG development involves taking data in one structure and converting it to other structured formats required by the FHIR IG Development process.

That includes creating .fsh and .md files from structured data.

I do most of my FHIR IG development in Eclipse (because if it involves code or transforms, that's where my XML Editors plug in, or my Java transform code for other formats).  I've narrowed down my processes so that I can run Sushi, the FHIR Build or my "custom build script" from within eclipse with one of three external tool configuration scripts:

Here's my normal "Build" script, which just launches build.bat in the project root folder:

<launchConfiguration type="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ProgramLaunchConfigurationType">
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.debug.ui.ATTR_CONSOLE_ENCODING" value="UTF-8"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_LAUNCH_CONFIGURATION_BUILD_SCOPE" value="${project}"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_LOCATION" value="C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_TOOL_ARGUMENTS" value="/c build.bat"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_WORKING_DIRECTORY" value="${project_loc}"/></launchConfiguration>

Sometimes I just want to rebuild the IG, for that I can just call the IG Publisher:

<launchConfiguration type="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ProgramLaunchConfigurationType">
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.debug.ui.ATTR_CONSOLE_ENCODING" value="UTF-8"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_LAUNCH_CONFIGURATION_BUILD_SCOPE" value="${project}"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_LOCATION" value="C:\jdk-11.0.2\bin\java.exe"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_TOOL_ARGUMENTS" value="-Xmx2G -jar ../publisher.jar -ig ig.ini -tx n/a"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_WORKING_DIRECTORY" value="${project_loc}"/>
</launchConfiguration>

And sometimes I just want to rerun Sushi alone, without running FHIR:

<launchConfiguration type="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ProgramLaunchConfigurationType">
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.debug.ui.ATTR_CONSOLE_ENCODING" value="UTF-8"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_LOCATION" value="C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe"/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_TOOL_ARGUMENTS" value="C:\Users\kboone\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\fsh-sushi\dist\app.js fsh -o ."/>
    <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.ui.externaltools.ATTR_WORKING_DIRECTORY" value="${project_loc}"/>
</launchConfiguration>

Save any of these snipped to a file named your-file-name.launch and you should be able to import it as an external tool configuration.

I've even gone so far (finally) as to make this build process an automated part of my check-ins to the FHIR Repository (that way I don't need to be present to run the scripts when source material changes).  What I usually do is take the command line (Windows) script and convert it to Unix and run it in GitHub CI/CD.  For V2-to-FHIR, I just recently created a CI/CD workflow that updates the Sushi from CSV files downloaded from Google Sheets.  This is all for publication purposes.  For SANER, I had other tools to create the SANER IG from an XML file I've been using for IG creation for IHE profiles.  Effectively what I'm doing is cloning myself using GitHub CICD.  I'm not even the first person in the community to do this.  It's basically how build.fhir.org runs, essentially as Grahame in-a-box, but it scales and neither I nor Grahame do.

We were running that up until a few weeks before final publication, after which we did all edits to the files created by the automated process, and removed all the code that supported that process.  That's because the FSH and FHIR IG content in GitHub are the official sources for the IG, not the process inputs used to generate them, and I don't want to be on the hook for maintenance for life for my own tooling that I'm using MOSTLY to make my life easier.

I've build now about 5 different guides using automated FHIR IG (and FSH generation tools).  It's the only way to fly when you have to turn dozens of structured inputs into FHIR IG outputs.