Cookiecutter

A few years ago, I used Cookiecutter to show how to get from import blah to pip install blah. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. A Python script can live almost anywhere, but a formal package needs the right structure to be built into a wheel. It needs dependency metadata, versions, releases, a licence, and some way to test that it still works. Cookiecutter gave us a standard template. Instead of remembering every file and setting and creating them manually, we answered a few questions and started with a working package. I gave a talk about that workflow in 2022. ...

In 2022, I gave a talk on creating and distributing Python packages. I used Cookiecutter to show how a template could turn an empty directory into a package with a predictable structure. The goal was to make packaging less mysterious. A new Python package needs more than a folder of source code. It also needs metadata, tests, documentation, a licence, and enough structure that someone else can install it and contribute to it. Cookiecutter gave us a concrete example to inspect instead of building every file by hand. ...