cookiecutter

A cookiecutter for Billinge-group packages.

This repository contains a cookiecutter template for generating a group-standard Python project complete with CI testing and documentation.

To do so, in a conda env that includes the cookiecutter package run:

cookiecutter https://github.com/billingegroup/cookiecutter

and follow the instructions.

Workflow for releasing diffpy (and other group) packages using cookiecutter.

This may only be a one-time deal as we bring all our packages up to the same level of uniformity (summer 2024), but these instructions will be left here in case we need to do this again in the future because of some desired change in our package structure.

DISCLAIMER

Do not delete/remove any files before confirming that it is absolutely not necessary. contact Simon (or Andrew) for assistance. When copying over documentation files, make sure you include any additional package-specific information that may be in those files. For instance, there may be a more verbose description of what the package does, or tutorial/example/utility files. DO NOT REMOVE THEM.

Finally take a glance at the API/documentation workflow below. This should be done as the last step after the Pytest tests are passing.

Pre-commit workflow

In your dev folder, fork and clone the package that you are preparing for release
cd into the top level directory of that project
git pull upstream main (make sure you are synchronized)
Double check that no bug-fix etc. pull-requests are waiting to be merged. May as well get them merged before doing this. Check with Simon if not sure.
Before running the cookiecutter, we want to run black and flake8 on the top level directory. Create a new branch and call it black. Preferrably, do not initialize pre-commit.
Edit the pyproject.toml so the section [tools.black] is consistent with pyproject.toml in {{ cookiecutter.repo_name }}.
Activate an env that contains black and run black src (note: some of the older packages do not have an src directory, so you may have to run black on a different directory).
If it runs successfully and makes changes, commit the changes (if your pre-commit is activated you can override it with -n to make these commits).
Let's run black on everything else. Run black . and commit any edits that are made. 19 Now, edit the .flake8 file so it's consistent with .flake8 in {{ cookiecutter.repo_name }}.
When this passes, open a PR and alert Simon.
When the PR is merged, update your main and create a new branch called precommit.
Make sure that .pre-commit-config.yaml is in your current directory. If it is not, copy it over from the cookiecutter.
In an env containing pre-commit, run pre-commit run --all-files
Make a new PR before doing any manual changes to files and have Simon merge it. Make sure tests are passing first though
Fix any errors and make periodic commits.
Make necessary edits and make periodic commits to make review easier.
Once complete, open a PR and alert Simon. When merged, you can continue on with the cookiecutter.

Cookiecutter workflow

At this point, make sure your branch is fully sync'd. Now, from the cloned directory run the cookiecutter cookiecutter https://github.com/billingegroup/cookiecutter
Answer the questions as:
1. (May occur if it is not the first time you have installed) Is it okay to delete: (y)
2. github_org: diffpy (if diffpy project) or billingegroup
3. keywords: current keywords in the setup.py or pyproject.toml in comma-separated string format, e.g., diffpy, pdf, something, something else (no quotes around it)
4. project_name: name of project (e.g. diffpy.pdfmorph)
5. package_dist_name: default
6. package_dir_name: default
7. minimum_python_version: 3.10 (default)
8. maximum_python_version: 3.12 (default)
9. is_boost_wrapper: no (in general, but if there are C++ extensions, this will be yes)
You should have created a new directory tree with the cookiecutter version of all the files in a subdirectory with the name <package_name>, e.g., diffpy.pdfmorph. Type ls to check it is there.
cd to the diffpy.<package_name>/ directory created by cookiecutter under the main directory (e.g., in our example pwd would return ~/dev/diffpy.pdfmorph/diffpy.pdfmorph) (we will refer to this as the cookiecutter directory).
Type ls -als (if you have the alias, this is ll) compare the directory structures in this directory tree to that in the original repo to see what is different (ignore files at this point). Nothing to do here, just get familiar with the differences.
Move the .git directory from the main directory to the cookiecutter directory. From the main directory type mv ../.git ..
Create a new branch for all the changes, e.g., git checkout -b cookierelease.
Copy the code from the old repo to the cookiecutter repo, without overwriting files in the destination (i.e., use cp -n or cp --no-clobber. e.g., from the cookiecutter directory where you currently are, type cp -n -r ../src . if the old code is already in a directory src. If there is no src directory, it will be something like cp -n -r ../diffpy ./src.
From the cookiecutter directory type git status. You will see a list of files that have been modified, deleted or are untracked. Untracked files are in the cookiecutter but not in the original repo, deleted files are in the original but haven't been moved over, and modified files are in both but have been changed.
Let's now copy over any documentation, similar to what we did with the src files. We want to copy over everything in the doc/<path>/source file from the old repo to the doc/source file in the new repo. In some old pacakges, <path> will be something like manual and in others it will just not exist.
1. If you see this extra manual directory, go to your cookiecutter directory. Then run cp -n -r ../doc/manual/source/* ./doc/source.
2. Make sure that if files are moved to a different path compared to root, you must check that the files paths referenced within the file are updated. The best way to do this is to open the project in PyCharm and do a global search (ctrl + shift + f) for ../ or .. and look at all relative path instances.
Now we will work on correcting all the things that are wrong.
1. Add and commit each of the untracked files to the git repo. These are in cookiecutter but not in the original repo, so can simply be "git added". Do it one (or a few) at a time to make it easier to rewind by having multiple commits.
2. Make a PR of your cookierelease branch by pushing your fork and opening a PR.
3. Files showing as deleted in a git status are in the old repo but not in the new cookiecutter. We took care of most these by moving over the src tree, but let's do the rest now. Go down the list and for in the git status "delete" files type cp -n ../<filepath>/<filename> ./<target_filepath>. Note that, generally, <filepath> and <target_filepath> will be the same, but may differ in cases such as /doc/manual/source and /doc/source respectively. If there are files there we don't want, don't move them over. Whenever files are copied over using the -n command, you may delete them in the main repository to keep your file-tree clean.
4. Files that have been modified exist in both places and need to be merged manually. Do these one at a time. First open the file in pycharm, then select Git|current file|show diff and the differences will show up. Select anything you want to inherit from the original file. In many cases we don't want to bring over things that have been polished in the cookiecutter, so you are mostly looking for code specific things, such as extended descriptions of the package in README and things like that.
5. Any files that we moved over from the old place, but put into a new location in the new repo, we need to delete them from git. For example, files that were in doc/manual/source/ in the old repo but are not doc/source we correct by typing git add doc/manual/source.

API workflow

This should be done only when the above steps are finished.

When you see files with ..automodule:: within them, these are API documentation. However, these are not populated. We will populate them using our release scripts.

Make sure you have our release scripts repository. Go to dev and running git clone https://github.com/Billingegroup/release-scripts.git.
Enter your cookiecutter package directory. For example, I would run cd ./diffpy.pdfmorph/diffpy.pdfmorph.
Build the package using python -m build. You may have to install python-build first.
Get the path of the package directory proper. In the case of diffpy.pdfmorph, this is ./src/diffpy/pdfmorph. In general, for a.b.c, this is ./src/a/b/c.
Run the API script. This is done by running python <path_to_auto_api> <package_name> <path_to_package_proper> <path_to_api_directory>.
1. If you have followed the steps above, the command is python ../../release-scripts/auto_api.py <package_name> <path_to_package_proper> ./doc/source/api.

Make sure you build the documentation by going to /doc and running make html. The error "No module named" (e.g. WARNING: autodoc: failed to import module 'tools' from module 'diffpy.pdfmorph'; the following exception was raised: No module named 'diffpy.utils') can be resolved by adding autodoc_mock_imports = [<pkg>] to your conf.py right under imports. This file is located in /doc/source/conf.py. In the case of PDFmorph, this was done by adding autodoc_mock_imports = ["diffpy.utils",].

Congratulations! You may now commit the changes made by auto_api.py (and yourself) and push this commit to the cloud! Make a PR! It will be merged, trust!

Final checks and sign-off

This should be done only when the above steps are finished.

make sure tests are all passing
Make sure news is up to date so the changelog will reflect all changes. For the cookierelease activity make a <branchname>.rst file by copying TEMPLATE.rst in the news folder and under "fixed" put Repo structure modified to the new diffpy standard
Check the README and make sure that all parts have been filled in and all links resolve correctly.
Run through the documentation online and do the same, fix any last typos and make all the links work. To do this the documentation must have been correctly built on a merge to main and enabled on the github.io website. Instructions are here
When you are are happy to sign off on the release send a Slack message to Simon saying something like "OK to release diffpy.<package-name>"

Workflow for testing diffpy.utils files

We are using diffpy.utils as a template for building the cookie cutter. To make sure the cookie cutter is giving output that is consistent with diffpy utils please use the following workflow:

One-time Setup:

have all your code off a dir called dev or sthg like that
within dev create a scratch area called scratch
clone diffpy.utils in the scratch area of my hard-drive
cd to this directory.
create an env that has cookiecutter and pexpect in it.

Running:

cd to scratch/diffpy.utils
run python /path/to/your/local/cookiecutter_project/test_utils.py which for me was python ../../cookiecutter/test_utils.py
This creates a new empty diffpy.utils under the old one using the current version of the cookie cutter (watch out, cookie cutter sometimes caches so if you make a change and it is not reflected, clear the cache).
cd to the directory that contains the file you are working on (for me it is cd . )
copy the file I am working on that was created by the cookiecutter to the current directory (for me it was cp diffpy.utils/.pre-commit-config.yaml .). It will overwrite the version that is already there.
run git diff This shows all the things you have to change in the cookiecutter to get it to create the file the same way as it is in diffpy.utils.
When it passes this "test" and the only things left are things we want, push a PR to cookiecutter
Paste screenshot of your terminal session showing the result of the copy and git diff.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from the NSLS-II scientific cookiecutter, thanks guys!: https://github.com/nsls-ii/scientific-python-cookiecutter

Here are more in-depth docs for using this from NSLS-II, adapted for this repr:

Documentation

Billingegroup / cookiecutter

readme