Possible items to add

[bourque]

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of possible items we could add to this template:

• A simple package directory structure to show how to set up an importable package
• .gitignore file with list of filetypes that are typically ignored in a repository
• .github/ folder with examples of issue and/or pull request templates
• .pre-commit-config.yaml file with some basic checks (e.g. detect-private-key, check-added-large-files, etc.)
• A pyproject.toml file and/or a setup.py file with a few third-party libraries to provide an example of a basic software environment
• A codecov.yml file for an example of how to use code coverage
• A CHANGES.md file as an example of a changelog
• A CITATION.md file as an example of how to properly cite the repository
• An example of how to use sphinx to create documentation (i.e. example conf.py / Makefile / index.rst file)
• Example GitHub Actions workflow to perform basic CI/CD
• Example GitHub Actions workflow to upload package to PyPI

Which of these should we implement? Which are overkill?

[maxinelasp]

I think some of this could go under either a different "python-project" template, or some kind of example repo that is not added by default. Ideally, I would want this template to be really easy to use with new or existing projects and to default only to things that are useful for 99% of the people using them.

Of your list, I think these could be added to this template:

• .gitignore
• .github/ (I'm borderline)
• .pre-commit file with very minimal defaults
• CHANGES.md/CITATION.md is interesting, although I think I would use github tags/releases instead of a markdown changelog.

I think the rest should be under either a new-python-project type template, for those who are starting from nothing and writing python, or an example repo. My personal votes would be to use poetry as default and to not include code coverage, but I'm sure you're unsurprised to hear that 😆