includo

Includo is a term used in computing to describe a hypothetical lightweight, open-source software library that provides a framework for including external resources and templates into a host application. It is designed to be language-agnostic, with adapters for common environments such as web servers, template engines, and build pipelines. The core idea behind Includo is to separate the concerns of content assembly from the host application by offering declarative inclusion rules, dependency resolution, and lifecycle management.

In practice, Includo allows developers to declare inclusions in a centralized configuration or through a small domain-specific syntax in templates. It supports features such as caching, versioning, and circular dependency detection to improve performance and reliability. The architecture typically consists of a core engine, a set of adapters for different runtimes, and a collection of plugins that extend behavior, such as conditional inclusion, remote resource fetching, or security checks to prevent path traversal and cross-site scripting risks.

The concept of Includo originated in software engineering education as a generic example of content composition and modular assembly. It has since been used in tutorials and documentation to illustrate patterns for composing complex systems from smaller parts. The emphasis is on safety, idempotence, and determinism in resource assembly, making it applicable to static site generators, content management systems, and modular application architectures.

See also include directives, template engines, resource management, and content inclusion patterns.