Concept

Concept

The UMC is baed on the original module creator that used to be available here but for some reason it is not anymore.
You can still get a copy of it from here. Read also the documentation.
If you are a magento beginner I suggest you use that until you get familiarized with how it works. Using UMC as a magento beginner can become overwhelming.

I've used that a long time ago when I started working with Magento and learned a lot from it.
But as the needs became bigger and bigger I had to take it up notch.

The concept is similar to that module creator.
It has some sample files with placeholders and based on the user input, those placeholders are replaced with the real values and the module files are generated.
The difference for UMC is that, for one module file it does not have one sample file.
It has a folder that contains files with placeholders. Based on the user input the sample files are added or not to the generated file.

All the sample files are located in etc/source.
There is an XML file (umc_source.xml) that contains the mappings between the sample files and the generated files and the conditions in which they are composed.

You can see how that file is parsed in Ultimate_ModuleCreator_Model_Module::_createFile.
You can even extend UMC if you need. the umc_source.xml file is loaded from all the extensions it will find.
So if you add such a file in your extension it will be taken into consideration and merged with the original file. Similar to how the config.xml files are merged by default.