mr.bob 2.0

Bob renders directory structure templates

Mister Bob the Builder creates directory skeletons.

Documentation

http://mrbob.readthedocs.org/

TODO

• [medium] refactor Python API

• [medium] gittip

• [medium] add +var+ folder in template_sample

• [medium] Check how one would implement multi-namespace python package with current mr.bob api

• [low] Ability to configure what to ignore when copying templates in bobconfig (as a hook?)

• [low] better format print questions output (keep order of questions -> use order information like for asking questions)

• [low] document we don’t need local commands once answers are remembered (just issue another template on top of current)

• [low] ability to specify variables/defaults to questions from cli

• [maybe] ability to simulate rendering (dry-run)

• [maybe] ability to update/patch templates

Changelog

2.0 (2026-04-16)

• Nothing changed yet.

2.0b1 (2026-04-16)

• Remove usage of pkg_resources. [erral]

1.0.1 (2024-02-29)

• Add support for Python 3.12 [pbauer]

1.0.0 (2022-09-24)

• Support for Python 3.10, drop Python 2 support. [pbauer]

0.1.2 (2015-08-19)

• Add pre_ask and post_ask hooks. [Godefroid Chapelle]

• Upload tarball instead of zipfile to fix unicode errors during installation [Domen Kožar]

0.1.1 (2014-03-03)

• Claim Python 3.4 support [Domen Kožar]

• Fix encoding errors on Python 3 during installation [Domen Kožar]

• Use Jinja2 < 2.7 only for python 3.2 [Domen Kožar]

0.1 (2014-03-02)

• move exceptions to bobexceptions [Jean-Philippe Camguilhem]

• Use jinja2 < 2.7, since 2.7+ doesn’t support Python 3.2 [Domen Kožar]

• Filename variable name substitution regex failed to compile on windows [Domen Kožar]

• Do not copy .DS_Store. [Godefroid Chapelle]

• Configure patterns of files to ignore through ignored_files option of mr.bob section. [Godefroid Chapelle]

• Configure patterns of directories to ignore through ignored_directories option of mr.bob section. [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new post-question hook mrbob.hooks.to_integer [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new post-question hook mrbob.hooks.to_decimal [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new post-question hook mrbob.hooks.validate_choices [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new post-question hook mrbob.hooks.validate_regex [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new pre-question hook mrbob.hooks.set_current_datetime [Fotis Gimian]

• Added new post-question hook mrbob.hooks.validate_datetime [Fotis Gimian]

0.1a9 (2013-04-26)

• Regex to detect variable names when rendering file names was broken when directory path contains pluses. [Godefroid Chapelle]

0.1a8 (2013-03-11)

• Depend on six>=1.2.0 [Domen Kožar]

• Moved all exceptions to mrbob.exceptions module [Domen Kožar]

• Fix loading of zip files [Domen Kožar]

• #28: Remote loading of config files [Nejc Zupan]

• #30: Keep newlines of rendered template [Domen Kožar]

0.1a7 (2013-01-23)

• Don’t depend on argparse in python 2.7 and higher, since it’s already in stdlib [Domen Kožar]

• #22: Prevent users from specifying target directory inside template dir [Domen Kožar]

0.1a6 (2013-01-02)

• Use StrictUndefined with jinja2 renderer so that any missing key is reported as an error [Domen Kožar]

• If a key in a namespace was missing while rendering, no error was raised [Domen Kožar]

• Added hook mrbob.hooks.show_message [Domen Kožar]

• mrbob.validators.boolean renamed to mrbob.hooks.to_boolean [Domen Kožar]

• Renamed validators.py to hooks.py [Domen Kožar]

• Removed validators and action settings from [questions] as it is superseded by hooks [Domen Kožar]

• Added pre_ask_question and post_ask_question to [questions] section [Domen Kožar]

• Added pre_render, post_render and post_render_msg options [Domen Kožar]

• Added [defaults] section that will override template defaults. The only difference to [variables] is that variables provide default answers [Domen Kožar]

• Moved renderer parameter to [template] section [Domen Kožar]

• Added [template] section that is parsed only from .mrbob.ini inside a template directory. [Domen Kožar]

• Correctly evaluate boolean of quiet and verbose settings [Domen Kožar]

• Added non_interactive setting that will not prompt for any input and fail if any of required questions are not answered [Domen Kožar]

• Added remember_answers setting that will create .mrbob.ini file inside rendered directory with all the answers written to [variables] section [Domen Kožar]

• Include changelog in documentation [Domen Kožar]

• Question does no longer raise error if unknown parameter is passed from a config file. Instead those parameters are saved to question.extra that can be later inspected and validated. This is first step to have advanced question types such as question with a set of predefined answers [Domen Kožar]

• Rewrite all py.test stuff to nosetests, so we have unified testing now. This also fixes flake8 segfaults on pypy [Domen Kožar]

0.1a5 (2012-12-12)

• #26: Variables were not correctly parsed from config files [Domen Kožar]

0.1a4 (2012-12-11)

• Fix MANIFEST.in so that template examples are also included with distribution [Domen Kožar]

• Add -q/–quiet option to suppress output which isn’t strictly necessary [Sasha Hart]

• Suppress the interactive-mode welcome banner if there are no questions to ask [Sasha Hart]

• Don’t raise KeyError: ‘questions_order’ if [questions] is missing in an ini [Sasha Hart]

0.1a3 (2012-11-30)

• #13: Read user config from ~/.mrbob (as stated in docs and inline comments). [Andreas Kaiser]

0.1a2 (2012-11-29)

• #12: Fix unicode errors when using non-ASCII in questions or defaults [Domen Kožar]

• Ask questions in same order they were defined in template configuration file [Domen Kožar]

0.1a1 (2012-10-19)

• Initial release. [Domen Kožar, Tom Lazar]