project init (pi)

This is a command-line utility written in rust that initializes projects based on templates. It is intended to provide something similar to cookiecutter, but faster.

Reasons to use pi:

• You want to automate the process of starting a new project, in a language-agnostic way.
• You want project initialization that's quick

Reasons to use pi over cookiecutter:

• Templates are smaller. Define files you need in a .toml rather than an entire directory tree.
• Fast. pi 30x faster than cookiecutter when rendering the sample vim plugin template.
• pi uses mustache, a logic-less language that has libraries for many other languages. That means that you can manipulate your pi templates in other languages.
• pi can initialize a git or mercurial repository inside your new project

Reasons to not use pi over cookiecutter:

• pi does not fetch templates remotely, while cookiecutter does.
• pi uses logic-less templates, which are not as sophisticated as the jinja templates that cookiecutter uses.
• pi is a work in progress. This might mean you end up missing a feature.

Cool benchmarks (with Haskell's bench):

Installation

Binary releases

You can find binaries on the release page. Unfortunately, I can only create binaries for x64 linux, ARM linux, and 64-bit Windows at this time.

Cargo

First, install cargo. Then type:

 $ cargo install project_init

and cargo will install pi for you.

Use

For use examples, check out examples/vim-plugin.

Bash commands:

pi init path/to/template/dir/ new-project

For builtin templates (available or vim, rust, haskell, and python):

pi new rust new-project

Configuration

Configuration is via the ~/.pi.toml file. The following is an example:

[files]
files = ["syntax/{{ project }}.vim","plugin/{{ project }}.vim","doc/{{ project }}.txt"]
directories = ["doc","syntax","plugin"]
templates = ["LICENSE","README.md","vimball.txt"]

[config]
version = "0.1.0"
version_control = "git"

You can also set your defaults (e.g. name, email) in ~/.pi.toml. The following is an example:

version_control = "git"

[author]
name = "Vanessa McHale"
email = "vamchale@gmail.com"
github_username = "vmchale"

This says your preferred version control is git, and sets your name & email.

Templates

pi uses mustache for templating, via the rustache crate.

You can find examples and help on the mustache page.