Updating Your Package
Once you have setup your project there will come a time when some things in the
package template change. Updating your package with these changes is a balance
between maintaining parity with the original template and customising your
project to your needs.
Using Cookiecutter to Update
It is possible to use the cookiecutter package to make it easier to update
your package with changes from the template. The basic workflow is to use
cookiecutter to create a clean version of the package template but with the
settings configured to your package and then pull the changes into your package.
Note
As of cookiecutter 1.5 this is the best way of doing this. Work will continue
to make this process easier, and possibly even automated.
Render the template: Putting in the same settings as the first time the
template was rendered (or using --replay) render the template to a
temporary folder:
$ cookiecutter [--replay] gh:astropy/package-template -o /tmp
Make a new branch:
$ git checkout -b update_template
Copy the template over your package: (replacing ‘packagename’ with your package name):
$ cp -r /tmp/packagename/* ./
Use git diff to see the changes:
Edit the files until the changes shown by `` git diff`` are the ones you want to have in your package.
Merge the changes Either by a Pull Request or by merging the update_template branch into your main branch.
Using git Update
A pre-rendered version of the package template is automatically generated in the
astropy/package-template
repository. This can be used as a git remote and changes pulled from it.
The downside of this approach is the branch is rendered using the default
settings, which means you are much more likely to get conflicts when you merge
this branch.
Add the Astropy package template repo as a git remote (if it is not already):
$ git remote add package-template https://github.com/astropy/package-template
Pull from the remote:
$ git fetch package-template
Merge the branch:
$ git merge package-template/master