Cookiecutter - Python Package

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.

- Blaise Pascal

Creating a new project from scratch is always frustrating because you have to setup for the hundredth time the same structure, often by copy pasting another project and renaming things.

This cookiecutter is here to help you lay a base structure for all of your python packages projects.

This template target is a GitHub Open Source Python library/CLI. I believe with a few tweaks you could adapt it for other uses, and if asked it may be included in the template depending on the maintenance workload implied.

Features

• Python >= 3.10
• Simple package with click CLI
• uv package manager
• Build-backend with hatchling, resolve version with VCS tags
• Code linting and formatting with ruff
• Type checking with mypy
• Testing with pytest and tox
• Docs with Material for MkDocs, versioned with mike
• Git hooks with pre-commit / prek
• Makefile to easily manage the project's lifecycle
• GitHub issue/merge requests templates
• GitHub action for docs, test, and release workflows
• Contributing guidelines, Code of Conduct.

How to use it

Install cookiecutter

I recommend using uv.

uv tool install cookiecutter

You could also use pipx.

pipx install cookiecutter

Generate you project

Go to the parent directory of where you want to create your project and run:

cookiecutter <this-cookiecutter-path>

You may want to generate the project at another location:

cookiecutter <this-cookiecutter-path> -o <project-parent-dir>

The generator (cookiecutter) will ask you for some inputs.

The input variables, with their default values (some auto generated) are:

• project_name: name of the project
• project_slug: slug of the project, lower-case and hyphen-style
• python_min: minimum version of Python required, by default "3.10"
• pkg_name: python-friendly name of the package. By default, based on the project name
• version: choose how the package version is resolved
  • Use the Version Control System, like tags from Git.
  • In pyproject.toml use the field project.version
• description: project single-line description
• author: author firstname and lastname
• email: author email
• license: choice of open source license
• copyright_year: year of the copyright, current year by default
• cli: whether to create CLI or not
• precommit_push_test: whether to run tests before git push or not
• precommit_push_docs: whether to generate docs before git push or not
• git_branch: git default branch (Examples: main, master)
• git_user: git username
• git_init: whether to init the git repository or not

License

Cookiecutter - Python Package is licensed under the MIT license. A copy of this license is provided in the LICENSE file.