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Contributing#

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions#

Report Issues#

Is something not working?

Report a bug

Missing information in our docs?

Report a docs issue

Want to submit an idea?

Request a change

Fix Bugs#

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with "bug" and "help wanted" is open to whoever wants to implement a fix for it.

Implement Features#

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with "enhancement" and "help wanted" is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation#

Cookiecutter PyPackage could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback#

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue or start a discussion.

If you are proposing a new feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.
  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.

Setting up and working in a development environment#

Ready to contribute? Here's how to set up cookiecutter-pypackage for local development. Please note this documentation assumes you already have conda and Git installed and ready to go.

  1. Fork the cookiecutter-pypackage repo on GitHub.

  2. Clone your fork locally in a directory of your choice (i.e., change path/to/repositories):

cd path/to/repositories
git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/cookiecutter-pypackage.git
  1. Assuming you have conda installed, you can create a new environment for your local development by typing:
conda create -c conda-forge -n cookiecutter-pypackage-dev --file requirements/dev.txt
conda activate cookiecutter-pypackage-dev
pip install --no-deps -e .
  1. Install pre-commit, which will ensure your changes are properly formatted when you commit your code (or install extension to run Ruff and Black on save in your IDE):
pre-commit install
  1. Create a branch for local development:
git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

  1. Make your changes! If your contribution is a bug fix or new feature, you may want to add a test to the existing test suite. See Add a New Test below for details.

  2. When you're done making changes on this new branch, run the tests:

pytest
  1. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:
git add .
git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
  1. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request (PR) Guidelines#

Before you submit a PR, check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The changelog has been updated.

  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.md.

  3. The PR should work for Python 3.10 - 3.12 (inclusive). Continuous integration tests will run in your PR and will fail if your changes break anything.

Add to the template#

Cookiecutter templates use Jinja templating syntax. For example, {{ cookiecutter.module_name }} -> python_boilerplate on running cookiecutter. You can get a good feel for this by looking at the current implementation.

The GitHub CI workflows also use the {{}} syntax, requiring anything that should be left behind after cookiecutter works its magic to be wrapped in {% raw %} and {% endraw %} commands.

If you want to add an empty directory, you should add a .ignore file into it (e.g., see resources/logos). This will ensure that cruft actually builds the directories. In a post-generation hook, this .ignore file will be deleted and you will be left with the empty directory.

Add a New Test#

When fixing a bug or adding features, it's good practice to add a test to demonstrate your fix or new feature behaves as expected. These tests should focus on one tiny bit of functionality and prove changes are correct.

To write and run your new test, follow these steps:

  1. Add the new test to tests/test_bake_project.py. Focus your test on the specific bug or a small part of the new feature.

  2. If you have already made changes to the code, stash your changes and confirm all your changes were stashed:

git stash
git stash list
  1. Run your test and confirm that your test fails. If your test does not fail, rewrite the test until it fails on the original code:
pytest
  1. Proceed work on your bug fix or new feature or restore your changes. To restore your stashed changes and confirm their restoration:
git stash pop
git stash list
  1. Rerun your test and confirm that your test passes. If it passes, congratulations!