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snickerdoodle is an easy-to-use, general-purpose cookiecutter template for
Python projects utilizing modern tools and best practices. To see an example repository using this template,
check out
snickerdoodle_demo.
There are a lot of cookiecutter templates. However, many are difficult to use,
overly opinionated, or underdocumented. I created snickerdoodle because I
couldn't
find another cookiecutter template meeting these criteria:
- Modern: follows best practices, using modern, actively developed tools.
- Batteries Included: allows you to start coding immediately.
- Flexible: no required usage of any external services. (SonarCloud, Travis, CircleCI, Tox, etc.).
- Low-Maintenance: every commit automatically deploys the documentation as well as lints, formats, and tests the repository.
- Well-Documented: the documentation includes complete guides for new and advanced users.
- PEP-Compliant: all included tools follow accepted
PEPs (unfortunately, that ruled out using
poetry, which is still not PEP 621 or PEP 631 compliant, three years after they were accepted, resulting in compatibility problems because of its non-standardpyproject.tomlformat).
To accomplish those goals, snickerdoodle includes modern, stable tools for package construction and
management that do not require any external services or costs:
- Dependency Management:
and
- Documentation:
with the
theme on
- Testing:
- CI/CD:
- Code Style:
,
, and
- Templating:
In addition to the included tools above, snickerdoodle includes several
options in the cookiecutter questionnaire that can be automatically applied
as part of the templating process:
- Badge Style:
,
,
,
, or
- Push an Initial Commit to GitHub
- Build and Deploy Basic Documentation to GitHub Pages
- Create a Virtual Environment in the Repository's ".venv" Folder
If you are new to cookiecutter or simply want to guarantee that the created repository works as intended, follow the instructions in the snickerdoodle tutorial.
If you are familiar with cookiecutter templates, you can go about the
normal construction process. However, if you do not select the optional
automatic setup features in the questionnaire, you should follow the instructions
for manually setting up your virtual
environment
and deploying your
documentation
in the snickerdoodle
tutorial. It is
especially important to follow the document deployment process for your initial deployment - after that GitHub Actions will automatically update and redeploy the
documentation (and you need not use the manual process again).
After your repository is created, you can start coding right away. Every push to GitHub will run any tests in the "tests" folder,
deploy documentation to GitHub Pages, and apply ruff for linting and
formatting. For more information about the following topics, just click on the
corresponding hyperlink.
Contributors are always welcome and should find snickerdoodle easy to work
with. The template is highly documented so that users and developers can adapt
or extend snickerdoodle to work with their projects. So, forking and creating
different template spins is encouraged. If you want to contribute directly, feel free to grab an issue to work on
or make a suggested improvement. If you wish to contribute, please read the
Contribution Guide and Code of
Conduct.
These are other cookiecutter templates using pdm as their dependency manager:
- cookiecutter-docker-python-pdm: uses Docker and
black. - cookie: uses
mkdocsand GitHub Actions, but also addsconda,nox,black, andpyright.
And, these are other general-purpose cookiecutter templates that are well-maintained, modern, and well-documented:
- cookiecutter-hypermodern-python: uses, among other tools,
sphinx, GitHub Actions,nox,mypy,flake8, andpoetry. If you do not mind those choices and wanted a modern, maintained template, this is the one to use. - cookiecutter-pylibrary: a newer template that is minimal compared to most and uses, among other tools,
sphinx, GitHub Actions,setuptools, Tox, and Travis-CI. - wolt python package cookiecutter: an interesting template that uses
cruftinstead of basecookiecutter. The created repository uses, among other tools,mkdocs, GitHub Actions,black,flake8, andpoetry.
If you are interested in going beyond cookiecutter (or its forks),
copier is a powerful, newer templating package
and there is a great template that incorporates
several of the tools used in snickerdoodle:
- copier-pdm: includes, among other
tools,
pdm,mkdocs, andruff.
I'd also like to extend a special thanks to pawamoy whose excellent pdm and mkdocs extensions and utlities are incorporated into snickerdoodle. Some of the scripts, documentation, configuration files, and other CI code were all adapted from pawamoy's repositories.
I would also like to thank the University of Kansas School of Law for tolerating and supporting this law professor's coding efforts, an endeavor which is well outside the typical scholarly activities in the discipline.
