Add an initialization or generation command for quick starts

[wgordon17]

Actual Situation

As a new user (or even long time user, just wanting to get a quick template skeleton set up), I'm left manually (oh, so painful) setting up a new template directory, with all the right structure and files.

Desired Situation

It would be ideal to have an "official" quick start/new start/skeleton template that can be used as the basis for creating new templates.

Proposed solution

copier is an awesome tool, and uniquely set up to solve this easily. I think it would make sense for copier-org to publish a "starter" template, something that copier copy could easily just set up. And then alias it as a copier init or copier generate command. It really doesn't even need to be anything more than https://copier.readthedocs.io/en/latest/creating/#minimal-example, it's more about having it as an "official" template, published by copier-org, and then the alias just makes it even more user friendly

[pawamoy]

Thanks for the request @wgordon17 🙂

I could see a copier new command indeed, generating a minimal template.

[sisp]

I'm not sure how much value a template starter would add. Even the minimal example contains some Python-specific content. A generic template for updatable projects would reduce to this:

📁
├── 📄 copier.yml
└── 📄 {{ _copier_conf.answers_file }}.jinja

Preferably, e.g. _subdirectory: template would be set in copier.yml, so a template with best practices settings would have a modified filesystem layout:

📁
├── 📄 copier.yml
└── 📁 template
     └── 📄 {{ _copier_conf.answers_file }}.jinja

Copier could automatically initialize a Git repository (if git is found), but more than git init can't be automated generically. If we implement #983, even the templated answers file will become obsolete.

IMHO, there is little benefit of Copier bootstrapping a new template project because there's almost no work to be done unless we make assumptions about the template.

[pawamoy]

Ah, yeah, good point. Then unless Copier provides some minimal templates for a few languages, there's no real value indeed.