Proposal to use a template engine for code generation

[youkaichao]

Currently, the code generation in triton uses python f-string, which has to deal with all the escaping for special characters like { and }.

Is it possible to use some template engine like Jinja to make the code generation more maintainable?

I come up with this issue when I tried to understand the generated source code. Copying cpp code in https://github.com/openai/triton/blob/main/python/triton/compiler/make_launcher.py leads to headache. I have to carefully back-escape the code.

If it is acceptable, I can take this PR to do the refactor.

@ptillet

[Jokeren]

I think it's a good proposal

[youkaichao]

Using template engine would separate the code string and the variables, which is not as intuitive as it is now. In addition, I have to deal with the various design of how to place the template files. The granularity is also a problem: there are some one-line f-strings, as well as several lines, together with f-strings with dozens of lines. I don't know how to control the granularity of when to use template engines.

Finally, I gave it up. Using a template engine does not bring much benefit.

The next time when I want to write the code myself, there are not many steps actually:

• replace {{ with {
• replace }} with }
• replace \" with "
• replace {expression} with actual values

@Jokeren