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How to create a new project from a project template using the Copier tool

Info

This how-to guide assumes that the Copier tool has been installed as described in the how-to guide for preparing your system.

There are two copier-based boilerplate projects:

Details may vary, please check README.md of those projects. But in general, process of project creation is the following:

  1. Select the boilerplate git tag you want to create your project from. Tags are available in GitLab

  2. Run copier copy command and provide answers.

    copier copy --trust --vcs-ref <TAG> <URL> <OUTPUT_PATH>

    Where:

    • is a version of the template (e.g. 2.0.0).
    • is a url of the template project (one of two mentioned on this page).
    • is a path where generated content will be stored. Can be relative or absolute.

    Question

    Why do I need to use the --trust flag?

    Our copier templates include some custom code which is used to pre-populate poetry lock files, etc. The --trust flag is required to allow copier to run this custom code.

    Copier will ask you for a number of input values. Every boilerplate has its own set, please check the docummentation.

  3. Navigate to the <OUTPUT_PATH> directory. This is a newly created project. It contains .copier-answers.yml where all data is store to be used later when this project will be updated with a new version of parent boilerpalate. The only thing left is to init git repository and add newly created project:

    git init .
git add -A
git commit -m "Initial commit"

  4. Review the result and push to the GitLab.

Using https URLs for templates

The _src_path URL in .copier-answers.yml should be a https://... URL to work well with renovatebot. This is fine for public templates but private templates, such as the GCP deploy boilerplate, will need the following command to be run to tell git to use SSH to clone those repositories:

git config set --global \
  url."git@gitlab.developers.cam.ac.uk:".insteadOf https://gitlab.developers.cam.ac.uk/