snekpy 1.0

Template tool for a Python projects

Snek is a project generator for bootstrapping Python packages, ready to be shared on PyPI and installable via pip.

Snek was forked from PyScaffold to remove the file advertisements and streamline it. It’s just a template generator. Use it if you want.

Quickstart

Just pick your favourite installation method:

pip install snekpy

After the installation, a new snek command will be available and you can just type:

snek my_project

This will create a new folder called my_project containing a perfect project template with everything you need for some serious coding.

After cd-ing into your new project and creating (or activating) an isolated development environment (with virtualenv, conda or your preferred tool), you can do the usual editable install:

pip install -e .

We also recommend using tox, so you can take advantage of the automation tasks we have setup for you, like:

tox -e build  # to build your package distribution
tox -e publish  # to test your project uploads correctly in test.pypi.org
tox -e publish -- --repository pypi  # to release your package to PyPI
tox -av  # to list all the tasks available

Configuration & Packaging

All configuration can be done in setup.cfg like changing the description, URL, classifiers, installation requirements and so on as defined by setuptools. That means in most cases it is not necessary to tamper with setup.py.

In order to build a source or wheel distribution, just run tox -e build (if you don’t use tox, you can also install build and run python -m build).

Package and Files Data

Additional data, e.g. images and text files, that reside within your package and are tracked by Git will automatically be included if include_package_data = True in setup.cfg. It is not necessary to have a MANIFEST.in file for this to work.

Note that the include_package_data option in setup.cfg is only guaranteed to be read when creating a wheels distribution. Other distribution methods might behave unexpectedly (e.g. always including data files even when include_package_data = False). Therefore, the best option if you want to have data files in your repository but not as part of the pip installable package is to add them somewhere outside the src directory (e.g. a files directory in the root of the project, or inside tests if you use them for checks). Additionally you can exclude them explicitly via the [options.packages.find] exclude option in setup.cfg.

Versioning and Git Integration

Your project is an already initialised Git repository and uses the information of tags to infer the version of your project with the help of setuptools_scm. To use this feature, you need to tag with the format MAJOR.MINOR[.PATCH] , e.g. 0.0.1 or 0.1. This version will be used when building a package and is also accessible through my_project.__version__.

Unleash the power of Git by using its pre-commit hooks. This feature is available through the --pre-commit flag. After your project’s scaffold was generated, make sure pre-commit is installed, e.g. pip install pre-commit, then just run pre-commit install.

A default .gitignore file is also provided; it is well adjusted for Python projects and the most common tools.

Sphinx Documentation

Snek will prepare a docs directory with all you need to start writing your documentation. Start editing the file docs/index.rst to extend the documentation. The documentation also works with Read the Docs.

The Numpy and Google style docstrings are activated by default.

If you have tox in your system, simply run tox -e docs or tox -e doctests to compile the docs or run the doctests.

Alternatively, if you have make and Sphinx installed in your computer, build the documentation with make -C docs html and run doctests with make -C docs doctest. Just make sure Sphinx 1.3 or above is installed.

Tests & Coverage

Snek relies on pytest to run all automated tests defined in the subfolder tests. Some sane default flags for pytest are already defined in the [tool:pytest] section of setup.cfg. The pytest plugin pytest-cov is used to automatically generate a coverage report. It is also possible to provide additional parameters and flags on the commandline, e.g., type:

pytest -h

to show the help of pytest (requires pytest to be installed in your system or virtualenv).

Projects generated with Snek by default support running tests via tox, a virtualenv management and test tool, which is very handy. If you run:

tox

in the root of your project, tox will download its dependencies, build the package, install it in a virtualenv and run the tests using pytest, so you are sure everything is properly tested.

Management of Requirements & Licenses

Installation requirements of your project can be defined inside setup.cfg, e.g. install_requires = numpy; scipy. To avoid package dependency problems it is common to not pin installation requirements to any specific version, although minimum versions, e.g. sphinx>=1.3, and/or maximum versions, e.g. pandas<0.12, are used frequently in accordance with semantic versioning.

All licenses from choosealicense.com can be easily selected with the help of the --license flag.