Prometa 2024.6

Manage project metadata.

---

title: README author: Jan-Michael Rye

Synopsis

Prometa is a tool to help automate project metadata updates. Currently it can do the following:

• Update pyproject.toml author data from a common configuration file.
• Update pyproject.toml project URLs for GitLab projects.
• Retrieve Software Heritage identifiers.
• Retrieve HAL open science identifiers.
• Generate codemeta.json from pyproject.toml using CodeMetaPy. Prometa handles bugs with the current version of CodeMetaPy that prevent it from processing README and license objects.
• Generate CITATION.cff from the configuration file and codemeta.json.
• Insert links, command output and citation data into the README.
• Register Python packages with GitLab CI.
• Create release jobs when tags are pushed with GitLab CI.
• Create a Software Heritage GitLab hook using python-gitlab

Prometa's suggested updates are passed to a user-configurable file merger so that the user can select the changes to apply to the original files.

Links

GitLab

• Homepage
• Documentation
• Source
• Issues
• GitLab package registry

Other Repositories

• Software Heritage

Configuration

Prometa loads configuration files named prometa.yaml in the current project directory and any parent thereof. These files will be merged internally to create a single configuration, with files in child directories taking precedence over their parent. This allows the user to keep common settings in a parent directory while allows for more specific settings in the context of a specific project or group of projects.

$ prometa --gen-config -
# A list of authors. They will appear in various files (e.g. pyproject.toml,
# codemeta.json, CITATIONS.cff).
authors:
    # Given names (required)
  - given-names: John

    # Family names (required)
    family-names: Doe

    # Email (optional)
    email: [e-mail]

    # Affiliation (optional)
    affiliation: Example Institute

    # ORCID identifier (optional)
    orcid: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

    # HAL Open Science identifier (optional)
    hal: XXXXXXX

# If true, create missing CITATIONS.cff files.
citations_cff: true

# By default, Prometa will attempt to detect each project's license using the
# spdx-matcher Python package. In some cases the detection fails (e.g. GPL v2
# and GPL v2-only use the same license text). This option can be set to an SPDX
# license identifier (https://spdx.org/licenses/) to force a particular license
# when the detection fails. If null or an empty strign then it will be ignored.
#
# Note that it will not modify license file.
license: null

# GitLab settings (optional)
gitlab:
  # Prometa uses python-gitlab to manage GitLab hooks that push code to other
  # open repositories (currently only Software Heritage). python-gitlab requires
  # both a configuration file and the name of the section in the configuration
  # file to use for a given project. For details, see the documentation:
  #
  # https://python-gitlab.readthedocs.io/en/stable/cli-usage.html#cli-configuration
  #
  # python-gitlab configuration file:
  config: path/to/python-gitlab.cfg

  # The section of the python-gitlab configuration file to use when retrieving
  # GitLab project data.
  section: somewhere

  # If true, use python-gitlab to update project hooks.
  update_hooks: false

  # Map GitLab hosts to their corresponding GitLab Pages URL formats. This map
  # will be used to generate documentation links when a "pages" job is detected
  # in the CI configuration file. The namespace and name parameters correspond
  # to those of the GitLab project.
  pages_urls:
    gitlab.com: "https://{namespace}.gitlab.io/{name}"

  # The regular expression for matching release tags. If given, a CI release job
  # will be created for tags that match this pattern. Omit this or set it to
  # null to disable release jobs.
  release_tag_regex: "^v."

  # Configure tags for GitLab CI jobs. This is a mapping of Python regular
  # expressions to lists of tags. Jobs that match the regular expressions will
  # be tagged with the corresponding tags. If multiple regular expressions match
  # a job then it will accumulate the tags.
  #
  # To apply the same tags to all jobs, use the regular expression ".".
  ci_tags:
      ".":
        - tag1
        - tag2
        - tag3

# The utility to use when merging changes. It must accept two file paths (the
# modified file and the original) and return non-zero exit status to indicate an
# error or abort.
merger: vimdiff

README Content Insertion

Content can be inserted into the README.md file using invisible comments of the format:

[insert: <label>]: #

...

[/insert: <label>]: #

Both the opening and closing tags must be preceded by empty lines to remain invisible when the Markdown is converted to other formats.

The label will determine which content is inserted and everything between the opening and closing insert comments will be replaced with the content specified by the label. The labels may be indented, in which case the inserted content will also be indented to the same level.

Prometa currently recognizes the following labels:

• citations <level>: Convert CITATIONS.cff to different formats from using with cffconvert and insert them into the README. The <level> parameter is an integer to indicate the heading level of the current context. It will be used to insert nested headers in the content. If omitted, level 1 is assumed.
• command_output[:<lang>] <command string>: Insert the output of an arbitrary command. The user will be prompted to confirm the command before it is run to prevent unknowingly executing arbitrary code. <command string> should be a valid shell command string. It will be interpreted internally using shlex.split(). The confirmation prompt will show the user the parsed command. The output will be wrapped in a code block. The user may specify an optional language for syntax highlighting by appending :<lang> to the end of the command_output label, where <lang> is the desired language. For example, to insert YAML output, use command_output:yaml command arg1 arg2 ....
• links <level>: Insert project links such as homepage, source code repository, issue tracker, documentation, etc. Optional third-part repository links (PyPI, SWH, HAL) will also be inserted if Prometa detects that they contain the project. The <level> parameter is the same as for citations above.

Installation

From Source

git clone https://gitlab.inria.fr/jrye/prometa.git
pip install -U prometa

From GitLab Package Registry

Follow the instruction in the link provided above.

Usage

$ prometa -h
usage: prometa [-h] [--config PATH [PATH ...]] [--gen-config PATH] [--trust]
               [path ...]

Update project metadata.

positional arguments:
  path                  Path to project directory.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --config PATH [PATH ...]
                        By default, prometa will search for configuration
                        files named "prometa.yaml" or ".prometa.yaml" in the
                        target directory and all of its parent directories,
                        with precedence given to configuration files closest
                        to the target directory. Additional configuration file
                        paths can be passed with this option and they will
                        take precedence over the detected configuration files.
                        If multiple configuration paths are given with this
                        command, their order determines their precedence.
  --gen-config PATH     Generate a configuration file template at the given
                        path. If the path is "-", the file will be printed to
                        STDOUT. Note that prometa will only look for files
                        named "prometa.yaml" or ".prometa.yaml".
  --trust               It is possible to insert arbitrary command output into
                        the README file. By default, prometa will prompt the
                        user for confirmation before running the command to
                        prevent arbitrary code execution in the context of a
                        collaborative environment. This option can be used to
                        disable the prompt if the user trusts all of the
                        commands in the README.