footing - Keep projects in sync with templates

Footing provides templated project creation and management.

The main functionality of footing includes:

1. Creating new projects from cookiecutter templates.
2. Listing all available templates under a git forge such as Github or Gitlab, along with listing all projects created from those templates.
3. Keeping projects up to date with the template as it changes.

A quick start is provided below. Be sure to go through the installation section before starting. It's also useful to read about cookiecutter templates since they form the foundation of this tool.

Quick Start

Listing templates and projects

Footing manages projects that are started from templates (specifically, cookiecutter templates). In order to see what templates are available for use, do:

footing ls <forge>

This will list all of the paths of templates that are available under a particular git forge. A git forge can be:

1. A Github user or organization, such as github.com/OrganizationName
2. A Gitlab group, such as gitlab.com/Group or gitlab.com/Nested/Group

Doing:

footing ls <forge> -l

will also display the extended description of the template.

To list all projects created with a template (and the project's descriptions), take the template path from footing ls and use it as the second argument like so::

footing ls <forge> <git@github.com:user/cookiecutter-template-path.git> -l

Note Be sure to provision a GITHUB_API_TOKEN or a GITLAB_API_TOKEN environment variable in order for this command to work. The environment variable needs to contain a personal access token to the appropriate forge.

Note This command only works with Gitlab when advanced search is enabled. See more here.

Starting new projects

A new project can be set up from a template with:

footing setup <template_path>

What happens next is dependent on how the template is configured. By default, cookiecutter will prompt the user for template parameters, defined in the cookiecutter.json file of the template repository. If any cookiecutter hooks are defined in the project, additional setup steps will happen that are specific to the type of project being started.

Keeping your project up to date with the latest template

If a template is ever updated, changes can be pulled into a footing-created project with:

footing update

This will git merge the template changes into your repository into a special _footing_update branch. You will need to review the changes, resolve conflicts, and then git add and git push these changes yourself.

Sometimes it is desired that projects always remain up to date with the latest template - for example, ensuring that each project obtains a security patch to a dependency or doing an organization-wide upgrade to a new version of Python.

Using footing update --check from the repository will succeed if the project is up to date with the latest template or return a non-zero exit code if it isn't. This command can be executed as part of automated testing that happens in continuous integration in order to ensure all projects remain up to date with changes before being deployed.

Note Updating your project with the latest template does not result in cookiecutter hooks being executed again.

Note If a _footing_update branch already exists from a previous update, call footing clean to delete the branch.

Switching your project to another template

Sometimes it is desirable to switch a project to another template, like when open sourcing a private package. Projects can be switched to another template with::

footing switch <template_path>

Similar to footing update, you will need to review the changes, resolve conflicts, and then git add and git push these changes.

Note Switching templates does not trigger any cookiecutter hooks. Users must manually do any project setup and must similarly do any project teardown that might have resulted from the previously template. The authors have intentionally left out this convenience for now since footing currently has no way to spin down projects.

Compatibility

footing is compatible with Python 3.10 - 3.14.

Next Steps

Check out the official docs for more examples on creating footing templates.