A couple months ago, I wrote a blog Introducing Cakecutter, which was, essentially, a modular version for create-python-project. Both of these projects were very easy, because they were just simple projects for me to practice the Rust programming language. I made them and forgot about it. But little did I know, small projects go a long way.
But then, a couple days ago, Yash (who is a fellow admin of the Coding Horizon community and an amazing developer), texted me, saying that he sees a lot of potential in my little pet project.
“Cakecutter is cool, let’s make it better”
And that’s exactly what we did.
We discussed new things we can implement, and decided to rewrite the entire thing in Golang
Ok, but what exactly is Cakecutter?
In a nutshell, Cakes are templates, which contain everything you need to set up a project. This includes:
- The file structure of a project (for eg. some boilerplate files,
README,src/folder) [DOCS] - File content (for eg. Pre-generated licenses, or boilerplate code) [DOCS]
- Commands to set up a project (for eg. Downloading dependencies, creating virtual environment) [DOCS]
Additionally, questions can be asked when setting up a project. Questions can be a selection between multiple things, or an input. Then, the answers to the questions can be used to fill in a template. [DOCS]
An example use case for this would be, asking the name of a user to auto-generate license, or you can even generate an entire README file with it!!
You can create files based on answer to a question, for example, creating a file only if the project is a typescript project.
And, you can even run commands based on answers. Example use case would be asking host OS to run setup commands!
This is a hell lot of power and functionality in just ONE CakeFile! (Just like real cakes 😆)
Have a look at the Basic example cake and you can also try out the Python cake
Sold yet? Install cakecutter.
Head over to https://docs.cakes.run/1-install/, or use with NPX:
npx cc
These are not even the biggest updates.
Like create-react-app , most people don’t like to make cakes. They like to eat them. We knew this, and a way to share cakes had to be made.
So, we created a publish command, so you can publish your cakes for others to use!
Try out this command to instantly generate a very simple python project template. Now you don’t need to create cakes!
npx cc cut python
Also, we created the website Cakes.run where you can find the documentation, installation guidelines, and also browse the cakes created by others.
To learn more about how to create cakes, Read the docs, and go through the examples repository
Your support is appreciated. Here’s how you can help
The entire stack - from the API, website, CLI, Docs - Everything is open source. You can find them on the Cake-cutter github organisation.
⭐ Star all repositories to spread the word. Especially this one, the main CLI 👇🏻
cake-cutter
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cakecutter
Open source, cross-platform developer tool that helps you quick-start your project. Creates files, runs commands, templating based on question. Also works as a setup tool
Cakecutter
Create projects from pre-built cakes (templates) in seconds!
👀 What is Cakecutter?
Sometimes, the most difficult thing is to just get started with a project. Cakecutter is a tool that helps you to cut the cake and start your amazing project instantly.
What Cakecutter does:
- Users can publish, create or use a cake from Cakes.run. Cakes are basically TOML files which contain all the information needed to create a project.
- According to the information in the
Cakefile, Cakecutter will create all the files and (you can also fill them with content) in the correct location. - Setup commands (installing dependencies, etc.) can be defined in the
Cakefile. These commands are run after the files are generated. - Cakecutter can ask questions to the user and take input. The input can then be used as variables for the project template. Read the docs here
- …
Follow Yash, the major contributor of this project, on DEV community and Github - https://github.com/kekda-py
Follow me, Dhravya Shah on Github - https://github.com/dhravya
Top comments (15)
sorry its not
npx ccits
and for mac -
and linux
but its preferred to install it first
then
sorry for the inconvenience caused
If it’s written in Go, what are the npx/m commands for?
We published the package as a binary executable to npm.
Not everyone has
goinstalled, and almost everyone hasnpmFair enough. Have you considered maintaining a Homebrew package for it? I'll try it out by installing with Go myself, but Homebrew would be easier, and less icky than npm.
Yes.. We were gonna publish it on homebrew, scoop and conda-forge
but once we found out that you can publish binary executables on npm. We published it there are thought it should be enough.
And we also did tried publishing it on scoop but the request got rejected because the project was very nee
Here are some features that we currently have in mind. feel free to share your own and give feedback about these
Extensions
Extensions will be a list of other published cakes or maybe even local cakes.
these
extswill be run before the actual cake. So you don't have to write extra code. and ask the questions.Data Gatherers
Data gatherers are kinda like questions but they are not asked. They are
commandswhich runs to gather data. like suppose you wanted to get the user's git username you can rungit config --get user.name:-Before creating the template these commands will be run and there output will be saved. and u can use them just like questions
How are you sandboxing the commands? Seeing as how we've had a variety of install-script-based attacks on the npm platform lately.
if u have an idea please suggest!
aahh you u can run anything rn
maybe if we list the commands that will be ran, in the cake page...
Hey! I'd like to help and to contribute , now that it's in go. I don't really know rust , but go is my bread and butter. You seem not to have contributing guidelines on github , so is their anyway I can help?
Thanks!
You can! We're working on creating issues, setting up future plans and also setting up contribution guidelines for everyone.
Thanks for showing interest in our project! till then, if you find any bugs, or can think of any features to implement or, in general, think that anything can be better, kindly create an issue
Great to see it come alive.
It looks pretty much like cookiecutter. Could you tell us more about the difference?
It's like our own implementation of Cookiecutter, but instead of the templates being stored in git repositories, they are stored as single files in our own database, with a central platform to find and use the "cakes"
Also, our implementation is faster
exciting stuff!