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Discussion on: How Do You Automate Your Boilerplate?

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m_nevin profile image
Marc Nevin

Template repos is what we’re currently thinking! Some scripts to generate some basic CI and implement a few hooks etc,

Something like building out a framework would be really interesting but we’re looking first at 0 - 1 then we can talk about those sort of things!

Primarily Python, with some Node and C# sprinkled in depending on the project! Any ideas?

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robertguss profile image
Robert Guss

I think a boilerplate repo would be the quickest and easiest to create and setup. I personally do this all the time for my own projects. I also like to search github for other boilerplates or starter kits and steal other peoples ideas.

You can search for things like flask boilerplate or whatever tool/language you use.

You can also use tools like hygen for code generation: hygen.io/

You also might be able to abstract certain parts into their own packages/modules and then just pull them in as dependencies.

Stuff like this takes a lot of iteration and experimentation. Overtime you will find what works best for you and your team. Start simple at first with just a repo you can clone and also see what other people are doing on Github.

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m_nevin profile image
Marc Nevin

Think you’re right, maybe a generic one to start - then we can fork it for each specific ones we need if we start to use them repeatedly, I think bare bones will be the start just to get it in use,

Hygen looks interesting will have to give it a try!

And yeah, seems like it’ll definitely change as we start to use it but sourcing everyone’s wisdom here will hopefully mean we can start making some big changes fast when people get used to it!

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jhermann profile image
Jürgen Hermann

Boilerplate repos, without sprinkling GH action fairy dust over them, have one big problem – all the TODO and FIXME places where customization has to be done – they simply get ignored 80% of the time.

Hmmm, maybe we could automate that "replace things by variables in texts" thing? 😏

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m_nevin profile image
Marc Nevin

Honestly, since the post we've been using cookie-cutter, mostly, to great success but have tried playing around with templates and GH Actions will need to revisit it properly but that manual process initially put me off!